Politics

The Halfway 'Obama Doctrine'

Monday, 27 May 2013 12:31

Parry writes: "President Obama's counterterrorism speech failed to quiet his critics on the Left who want an immediate end to the 'war on terror' and those on the Right who demand more Bush-Cheney policies."

President Barack Obama delivers remarks during a rally in Largo, Maryland, 03/15/12. (photo: Getty Images)

The Halfway 'Obama Doctrine'

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

27 May 13

ow to view President Barack Obama's speech on counterterrorism can be likened to how you might think about a serious drug problem: you could deny that anything's wrong and keep using; demand a cold-turkey withdrawal; or ratchet down the drug dosage over time to a minimal level.

Obama, both in his speech and his evolving policies, has opted for the third approach. Overall, he has reduced the levels of violence even as he has used some methods, such as lethal drones, with greater ferocity than his predecessor. Yet, even with drones, the number of strikes has been dropping in recent months.

The President also has withdrawn all U.S. combat forces from Iraq - to the dismay of Official Washington's neocons - and has drawn down troop levels in Afghanistan after a 2009 "surge" advocated by his holdover Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the military high command.

In his May 23 speech, Obama also announced that he will resume repatriating Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been deemed not to represent a terrorist threat. Obama vowed, too, to revive his earlier effort to close the offshore prison despite vigorous congressional opposition.

In other words, one way to evaluate Obama - just past the expected halfway mark of his presidency - is by measuring the trends of American military violence as he has scaled it back, rather than judging each individual aspect which may have its own legal and humanitarian concerns, i.e. violations of international law from drone strikes and the deaths of more noncombatants.

For many of Obama's critics on the Left, his measured approach toward gradually weaning U.S. national security policy off its heavy reliance on violence (like conventional war) and replacing that with more selective tactics (like drones) is still unacceptable. His strategy does, as they note, continue to flout international law.

To these critics, the use of weaponized drones in the airspace over other nations is a clear violation of their sovereignty and the killing of civilians (or even suspected terrorists) breaches standards on human rights and due process. Whatever sophistry Obama and his lawyers may devise, there is no doubt that these objections are correct.

International law offers no special permission for the United States to conduct a transnational war against shadowy organizations of loosely defined "militants." Imprecise claims of self-defense are not what the United Nations Charter had in mind when it included that exception to prohibitions on military force.

One can only imagine how outraged Official Washington would be if some other country began sending unmanned aerial vehicles across borders to assassinate its "enemies." Such a country would be branded an international outlaw or worse.

Moral Grays

Still, Obama's speech represented something of a plea to his critics to see the problem in the moral grays of a shadow struggle against a ruthless foe eager to kill innocent civilians, not in the blacks and whites of a perfect world where the rule of law neatly prevails. In one of the most emotional parts of his speech, Obama said:

"America does not take strikes to punish individuals; we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured - the highest standard we can set.

"Now, this last point is critical, because much of the criticism about drone strikes - both here at home and abroad - understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. There's a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and nongovernmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. ...

"For me, and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. But as Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives.

"To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties - not just in our cities at home and our facilities abroad, but also in the very places like Sana'a and Kabul and Mogadishu where terrorists seek a foothold. Remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes. So doing nothing is not an option."

Implicit in his speech was a warning, too, that any president who ignores the terrorist threat invites even more draconian policies in the future if another 9/11 happens. However, Obama argued that even staying for too long on the course charted by George W. Bush would fundamentally alter the U.S. constitutional structure. He said:

"America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. We have to be mindful of James Madison's warning that 'No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.' Neither I, nor any president, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society.

"But what we can do - what we must do - is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger to us, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all the while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. And to define that strategy, we have to make decisions based not on fear, but on hard-earned wisdom."

Political Imbalance

In effect, Obama was acknowledging the reality of today's U.S. political/media structure that has made "security" against terrorism a prerequisite for holding high office. So, rather than go "cold-turkey" on America's addiction to endless warfare - the narcotic to dull the fear of another 9/11 - he opted for a gradual withdrawal from this dependency.

Obama's approach has led to a zigzag path in his national security policies. He kept on Bush's last Defense Secretary Gates and Bush's high command, including Gen. David Petraeus, a neocon favorite. As a nod to more hawkish Democrats, Obama named Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State.

Obama ignored warnings from some analysts that he risked getting boxed in to more military-oriented solutions than he might personally prefer - which happened in 2009 when Gates, Petraeus and Clinton pushed for a major troop escalation in Afghanistan, a move that some administration officials say Obama regretted almost immediately.

However, he twinned the escalation with a commitment to phase out the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. He also stepped up drone attacks against al-Qaeda-related targets in Pakistan, Yemen and other countries as he pressed ahead with a military withdrawal from Iraq, a pullout that was completed by the end of 2011.

Bending to Secretary Clinton's wishes, Obama authorized use of U.S. air power in the military campaign to oust Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. But Obama refused to commit combat forces in Libya, and in the Syrian civil war, he resisted pressure from Petraeus (who had become CIA director) and Clinton to arm the Syrian rebels in their struggle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Both Petraeus and Clinton were soon gone.

Obama also has rejected Israeli demands that he join in air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, relying instead on economic sanctions to restrain Iran's advancement of its nuclear capabilities and insisting that military action would be only considered as a last resort to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb, which its senior officials say they don't want anyway.

So, one way to assess what might be called the Obama Doctrine is to recognize the nuances that he has added to the U.S. use of military force, especially when compared to the policies of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. In particular, Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine" insisted on a violent response against a possible terrorist threat even if the perceived risk were only one percent.

If the Obama Doctrine continues for the next three-plus years without any major reversals - i.e., no large-scale terrorist strike inside the United States or some new conflict abroad - it's likely that American military forces will be more at peace than at any time since 9/11. Even drone attacks would be a relatively rare event.

And, if Obama lives up to his commitments in his May 23 speech, the number of detainees at Guantanamo (or some successor site) would be dramatically reduced, presumably down to several dozen men identified as dangerous terrorists, including some implicated in the 9/11 attacks.

Frustration of Gradualism

That gradualism, however, is not acceptable to Americans who favor the "cold-turkey" response to the U.S. addiction to the Bush-Cheney anything-goes behavior after 9/11. They insist that Obama abide by international law, renounce use of lethal drones and accept unconditionally the constitutional principles of legal due process - now.

Besides the civil liberties concerns, people in this group argue that the goal of reducing terrorism is best advanced by closing U.S. military bases around the world and addressing legitimate grievances of Muslims and other groups alienated by decades of American double-talk and double-standards.

That way, this group maintains, the United States can be both true to its ideals and safer. They believe that Obama's approach of simply phasing down the Bush-Cheney lawlessness only invites more anger in the Islamic world and more danger at home.

There is, of course, the third grouping, Americans who still favor the Bush-Cheney "tough-guy-ism." This group asserts that U.S. "enemies" only respect American force and that any hesitancy to use it shows weakness and vulnerability. Many in this group believe that a "clash of civilizations" is under way and that political Islam must be categorically defeated.

Though these advocates for "the Long War" have been on the defensive since Bush's failures in Iraq and Obama's election in 2008, they remain a powerful force in Official Washington and throughout the U.S. news media. They include leading politicians such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham; many analysts at prominent think tanks; and many commentators at media outlets from Fox News and right-wing talk radio to the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Whenever there's a setback in Obama's strategy, these loud voices are quick to denounce his perceived "failure" on "terror," as we've seen after last year's Benghazi attack and this year's Boston Marathon bombings.

Part of Obama's trouble here is the continuing inability of the Left to build any significant mechanism for reaching out to the American people with information and analysis, certainly nothing that compares to the billions upon billions of dollars that the Right has spent to build its vertically integrated media machine, from newspapers, magazines and books to radio, TV and well-funded Internet sites.

That imbalance has left Obama on the defensive any time a terrorist attack succeeds. Not only does he get bashed from the Right but from the mainstream media, as occurred in the months since the Benghazi attack over something as trivial as the preparation of "talking points" for a second-tier official appearing on TV.

An Imperfect Strategy

Yet, instead of investing in a media apparatus that can begin to counter what the Right has created, many on the Left seem content to berate Obama for his imperfect strategy. In their view, it's not enough for Obama to have reduced the bloodshed. It will not be enough even if he has all U.S. combat troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and makes the targeting of suspected terrorists a rare event. Any violent acts - no matter how seemingly justifiable and isolated - will still be condemned, as will Obama.

Nevertheless, the emerging reality is that the Obama Doctrine is slowly - arguably way too slowly - eliminating many of the worst violations of international law and the rules of war that were central to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine. A new equilibrium is emerging between homeland security and human rights. This rebalancing is far from perfect and needs continued criticism and vigilance, but there have been undeniable steps in a less violent and a less lawless direction.

Nothing that Obama has done in office can reasonably be compared to Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq with the resulting deaths of nearly 4,500 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. That was both a gross violation of international law, a humanitarian catastrophe (which continues to this day in Iraqi sectarian violence), and a gateway for many young Muslims to develop hatred toward the United States.

Yes, I know that force feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo inflicts pain and can be regarded as torture, but it is not the same as torturing detainees with waterboarding and other brutal techniques for the purpose of extracting information. One procedure is done to keep people alive; the other put lives at risk and, in some cases, resulted in deaths.

The answer to the hunger strike is to do what Obama has belatedly committed himself to do: transfer cleared detainees to other countries as quickly as possible, waiving whatever restrictions Congress has imposed, and to put other detainees on trial, preferably in civilian courts which have been much more effective in handling terrorism cases than the makeshift military tribunals. It also might help if ending the "war on terror" was made an issue in the congressional elections in 2014.

In summation, to return to the metaphor of drug abuse: The American political system is far from clean. It still wants a security "fix" from time to time. But the dosages are down and declining. This gradual withdrawal is making the patient healthier albeit slowly. Yet there remains a big danger of a relapse.

5 comments

FOCUS | Should Memorial Day Include Commemoration of Thoreau?

Monday, 27 May 2013 10:34

Cole writes: "Thoreau was saying that in times of an unjust law and an unjust war, honorable persons will likely be in jail."

Henry David Thoreau. (illustration: unknown)

Should Memorial Day Include Commemoration of Thoreau?

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

27 May 13

emorial Day began as a commemoration for the dead in the US Civil War, and especially for the Northern dead. Southern states for the most part had their own days of mourning for Confederate dead (some still do). Only after World War I when the day was repurposed as a commemoration of the soldiers killed in all American wars was it gradually adopted by all the states; ultimately it became the subject of Federal legislation.

In its original incarnation as a product of the Civil War, Memorial Day was divisive and triumphalist, a Northern institution. If it were more widely remembered that the day began with this focus, we might be less enthusiastic about it today. After all, we have mixed feeling about having fallen into civil war in the first place. Perhaps repurposing is central to our commemorations today.

Progressives have long been uncomfortable with the idea of a day dedicated to soldiers killed in the nation's wars. Conflicts like James K. Polk's Mexican War, William McKinley's Spanish-American War, Teddy Roosevelt's Philippines War, Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War, and George W. Bush's Iraq War were wars of aggression, seeking territory or resources or both. No one would want to exalt these seedy episodes in American history, however much we regret the soldiers' lives expended.

Polk imposed a poll tax to pay for his Mexican War, which Henry David Thoreau declined to pay. He had authored, the first year of the war (1846), a work he entitled "Civil Disobedience," staking out the right of individuals to decline to obey unjust laws. Thoreau went to jail for a night over the stance he took on the poll tax, until someone paid his bail. There is an anecdote that his friend, the essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, came to see him in jail. Emerson exclaimed, "What are you doing in there?" Thoreau replied, "Waldo, the question is what you are doing out there?"

Thoreau was saying that in times of an unjust law and an unjust war, honorable persons will likely be in jail.

Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" went on to influence Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King (which is how we got the Civil Rights movement and an end to Jim Crow segregation.)

While the American soldiers who have died in the nation's wars deserve to be memorialized, not all the wars they fought in do. A wise nation would barbecue with a sense of unease today, a sense of regret at all the unnecessary and merely greedy wars the nation has fought.

Memorial Day, it seems to me, should also honor the Thoreaus, the conscientious objectors, the anti-war protesters, who attempted to forestall or shorten the more unjust or immoral of these wars. It isn't only the fallen soldiers who served the nation, but also those who worked to ensure that no soldiers fell in unjust wars, in wars that after the UN Charter was passed in 1945, would be designated as "illegal."

53 comments

What Can We Learn From Denmark?

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15102"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News</span></a>

Monday, 27 May 2013 08:41

Sanders writes: "Denmark and the United States are very different countries. Nonetheless, are there lessons that we can learn from Denmark?"

Sen. Bernie Sanders gestures as he speaks at the California Democrats State Convention in Sacramento, Calif., April 30. (photo: AP)

What Can We Learn From Denmark?

By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News

27 May 13

anish Ambassador Peter Taksoe-Jensen spent a weekend in Vermont this month traveling with me to town meetings in Burlington, Brattleboro and Montpelier. Large crowds came out to learn about a social system very different from our own which provides extraordinary security and opportunity for the people of Denmark.

Today in the United States there is a massive amount of economic anxiety. Unemployment is much too high, wages and income are too low, millions of Americans are struggling to find affordable health care and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider.

While young working families search desperately for affordable child care, older Americans worry about how they can retire with dignity. Many of our people are physically exhausted as they work the longest hours of any industrialized country and have far less paid vacation time than other major countries

Denmark is a small, homogenous nation of about 5.5 million people. The United States is a melting pot of more than 315 million people. No question about it, Denmark and the United States are very different countries. Nonetheless, are there lessons that we can learn from Denmark?

In Denmark, social policy in areas like health care, child care, education and protecting the unemployed are part of a "solidarity system" that makes sure that almost no one falls into economic despair. Danes pay very high taxes, but in return enjoy a quality of life that many Americans would find hard to believe. As the ambassador mentioned, while it is difficult to become very rich in Denmark no one is allowed to be poor. The minimum wage in Denmark is about twice that of the United States and people who are totally out of the labor market or unable to care for themselves have a basic income guarantee of about $100 per day.

Health care in Denmark is universal, free of charge and high quality. Everybody is covered as a right of citizenship. The Danish health care system is popular, with patient satisfaction much higher than in our country. In Denmark, every citizen can choose a doctor in their area. Prescription drugs are inexpensive and free for those under 18 years of age. Interestingly, despite their universal coverage, the Danish health care system is far more cost-effective than ours. They spend about 11 percent of their GDP on health care. We spend almost 18 percent.

When it comes to raising families, Danes understand that the first few years of a person's life are the most important in terms of intellectual and emotional development. In order to give strong support to expecting parents, mothers get four weeks of paid leave before giving birth. They get another 14 weeks afterward. Expecting fathers get two paid weeks off, and both parents have the right to 32 more weeks of leave during the first nine years of a child's life. The state covers three-quarters of the cost of child care, more for lower-income workers.

At a time when college education in the United States is increasingly unaffordable and the average college graduate leaves school more than $25,000 in debt, virtually all higher education in Denmark is free. That includes not just college but graduate schools as well, including medical school.

In a volatile global economy, the Danish government recognizes that it must invest heavily in training programs so workers can learn new skills to meet changing workforce demands. It also understands that when people lose their jobs they must have adequate income while they search for new jobs. If a worker loses his or her job in Denmark, unemployment insurance covers up to 90 percent of earnings for as long as two years. Here benefits can be cut off after as few as 26 weeks.

In Denmark, adequate leisure and family time are considered an important part of having a good life. Every worker in Denmark is entitled to five weeks of paid vacation plus 11 paid holidays. The United States is the only major country that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation time. The result is that fewer than half of lower-paid hourly wage workers in our country receive any paid vacation days.

Recently the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the Danish people rank among the happiest in the world among some 40 countries that were studied. America did not crack the top 10.

As Ambassador Taksoe-Jensen explained, the Danish social model did not develop overnight. It has evolved over many decades and, in general, has the political support of all parties across the political spectrum. One of the reasons for that may be that the Danes are, politically and economically, a very engaged and informed people. In their last election, which lasted all of three weeks and had no TV ads, 89 percent of Danes voted.

In Denmark, more than 75 percent of the people are members of trade unions. In America today, as a result of the political and economic power of corporate America and the billionaire class, we are seeing a sustained and brutal attack against the economic well-being of the American worker. As the middle class disappears, benefits and guarantees that workers have secured over the last century are now on the chopping block. Republicans, and too many Democrats, are supporting cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition, education, and other basic needs -- at the same time as the very rich become much richer. Workers' rights, the ability to organize unions, and the very existence of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are now under massive assault.

In the U.S. Senate today, my right-wing colleagues talk a lot about "freedom" and limiting the size of government. Here's what they really mean.

They want ordinary Americans to have the freedom NOT to have health care in a country where 45,000 of our people who die each year because they don't get to a doctor when they should. They want young people in our country to have the freedom NOT to go to college, and join the 400,000 young Americans unable to afford a higher education and the millions struggling with huge college debts. They want children and seniors in our country to have the freedom NOT to have enough food to eat, and join the many millions who are already hungry. And on and on it goes!

In Denmark, there is a very different understanding of what "freedom" means. In that country, they have gone a long way to ending the enormous anxieties that comes with economic insecurity. Instead of promoting a system which allows a few to have enormous wealth, they have developed a system which guarantees a strong minimal standard of living to all -- including the children, the elderly and the disabled.

The United States, in size, culture, and the diversity of our population, is a very different country from Denmark. Can we, however, learn some important lessons from them? You bet we can.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

50 comments

Scalia vs. Roberts

Sunday, 26 May 2013 13:50

Donnelly and Kendall write: "Now the two conservative justices are dueling again - only they've switched sides."

The ways in which Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts don't see eye-to-eye are becoming more apparent. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Scalia vs. Roberts

By Tom Donnelly, Doug Kendall, Slate Magazine

26 May 13

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ast June, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia went at each other over Obamacare. Roberts famously joined with the court's liberals to uphold most of the health care law, handing the president a victory, while Scalia voted with the court's conservative bloc to kill the law. In the process, Roberts celebrated judicial restraint, which counsels against striking down acts of Congress, and Scalia mouthed Tea Party talking points, which promote going after federal laws and regulation by any means necessary. Now the two conservative justices are dueling again - only they've switched sides.

In City of Arlington, Texas v. FCC, a ruling this week that allows the Federal Communications Commission to trump state and local zoning laws for cellphone towers, it's Roberts in dissent who's playing Tea Party darling, while Scalia lectures him on the importance of judicial modesty. Arlington illustrates that while Roberts and Scalia agree about the goal of reining in the federal government, they disagree, sharply, about how to do it. Scalia favors bold strokes such as striking down Obamacare, and Roberts prefers a slower, creeping, case-by-case dismantling of federal power.

The underlying dispute in Arlington is pretty boring. Federal law requires state and local governments to approve or deny an application to site a cellphone tower within a "reasonable period of time," and the FCC issued rules defining that phrase. The City of Arlington, Texas, challenged the FCC's authority to make these rules. Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and the court's four liberals, rejected that challenge under longstanding rules that require judges to defer to reasonable judgments made by federal agencies.

What makes the opinions in Arlington catnip for court-watchers is the sharp exchange between Scalia and Roberts over judicial power to check the federal government. Echoing the libertarian canard that "the Framers could hardly have envisioned today's �vast and varied federal bureaucracy,' " Roberts decried the government for its "thousands of pages of regulations" and agencies such as the FCC for "poking into every nook and cranny of daily life." Worse yet, he said, the federal government keeps growing and growing, with new agencies - and their "potent brew of executive, legislative, and judicial power" - multiplying each year. Quite remarkably, Roberts' Exhibit A is Obamacare, never mind that the law owes its existence to him.

Having been thwarted by Roberts in his effort to throw out the ACA entirely, Scalia wasn't about to join Roberts in his backdoor, incremental approach in Arlington, which, in Scalia's words, involved "sifting through the entrails of vast statutory schemes." Scalia also accused Roberts of pushing to overturn or gut Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a unanimous landmark 1984 decision. Written by progressive stalwart John Paul Stevens, Chevron has gained adherents across the ideological spectrum - including Scalia and Thomas - for its success in reining in judges. Above all, Chevron keeps judges from simply making policy from the bench, instead requiring them to accept the reasonable conclusions of government experts on complicated (and important) issues like climate change, clean water, food and drug safety, and, in this case, the siting of cellphone towers. According to Scalia, Roberts' approach would replace the relative stability of judges deferring to agencies with the "chaos" of judges trying to second-guess every regulation issued by federal agencies to prevent bureaucratic overreach.

While the Roberts vs. Scalia face-off is mainly about style and tactics, not ideology - they both agree on the goal of reducing the size of the federal government - it's real and likely to last. For sure they will put aside their differences in many cases, starting in all likelihood with the upcoming ruling in an Alabama county's challenge to a key part of the Voting Rights Act. Still, the court's right flank is divided, and that is producing some surprising and important legal victories for the Obama Administration.

10 comments

Stupidity Can Be Cured

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>

Saturday, 25 May 2013 13:09

Boardman writes: "Here's a Florida school giving an object lesson in how to be really stupid."

Expelled for a science experiment gone bad? (photo: stock image)

Stupidity Can Be Cured

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

25 May 13

Here's a Florida school giving an object lesson in how to be really stupid.

t's not as though a bunch of white people in central Florida have been consciously conspiring about the best way to trash a 16-year-old black girl's life, but the effect of their collective personal and institutional stupidity may well produce the same effect. At first there was no sign that any of them much cared, but now there's a ray of hope for a just outcome. Read on.

It's not as though this cultural stupidity in Florida isn't an all-American sort of thing that could happen anywhere, and probably has in a variety of forms similar to the recent mindlessness that led school officials to call the police who called the prosecutor who decided, over the phone, to have a 16-year-old girl arrested as an adult and charged with two felonies under state law because she did an outdoors experiment that blew up an 8 oz. water bottle with the force of a small firecracker, doing no damage and harming no one.

This is the case of 11th grader Kiera Wilmot, a Bartow High School honor student with straight A's and a perfect behavior record, according to school officials. Sometime around 7 a.m. on Monday, April 22, she tried an experiment with a friend watching: she mixed hydrochloric acid (in a toilet bowl cleaner) with a bit of aluminum foil inside a plastic water bottle, a trick known familiarly as a "Drano bomb" or "works bomb." As predicted in online descriptions (and shown in video), shortly after Kiera Wilmot mixed the ingredients and put the cap on the bottle, hydrogen gas was produced, with enough pressure to pop the top off the bottle with the sound of a small firecracker.

Arguably, that was a stupid thing to do, at least on school grounds.

So the Question Quickly Arises, Are There Any Grown-Ups Here?

Then the adults got involved and took the stupidity to higher levels, quickly producing a stupidity tsumani of an all too familiar American kind.

The first adult on the scene is Dan Durham, white, the assistant principal in charge of discipline at Bartow High. He hears the bottle pop outside the building before the school day starts. He goes to investigate. He finds Kiera Wilmot and she tells him the whole story, such as it is.

She tells him it's an experiment she was doing in anticipation of the science fair. Apparently not believing her, perhaps fearing an international terror conspiracy, Durham calls her science teacher (who remains anonymous), who says that Kiera Wilmot's bottle pop has nothing to do with her science class with him, so his skirts are clean. Of course what she does for science class is different from the science fair, but apparently no one tries to figure that out.

Continuing his enforcement action, Dan Durham calls the cops, which is easy enough since there's a "resource officer" on the premises.

At some point principal Ron Pritchard, white, doesn't get involved and lets the situation continue to spin out of control. Faced with a bright young 16-year-old honor student with a perfect behavior record, who admits she just did an experiment that was louder than she'd expected, principal Pritchard doesn't act to put Kiera Wilmot's harmless behavior in perspective.

An Educator With a Passive-Aggressive Vicious Streak

Instead, with a kind of passive-aggressive viciousness, he ignores the best interests of a child under his care, he doesn't exercise leadership or good judgment, he stays out of the way. Maybe he thinks he's defending the institution, or himself, but whatever he was thinking, he lets law enforcement help make things worse.

And the principal knew all along what was real. Playing the kindly old duff on TV later, he said of Kiera Wilmot: "She just wanted to see what would happen and I think it shocked her that - because she was very honest with us when we were out there talking and I think, I think it kind of shocked her that it did that."

That was a few days later, when he knew full well how his own inaction had contributed to Kiera Wilmot getting arrested and charged as an adult with felony charges alleging she "discharged a weapon" and "discharged a destructive device."

Kiera Wilmot's weapon/device was an 8 oz. water bottle with toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum that hurt no one and destroyed nothing.

But principal Pritchard told a TV reporter: "She's a good kid and, you know, she made a bad choice and stuff and, uh - I don't think that - she was not trying to be malicious to harm anybody or destroy something at school or anything else."

In Florida educational circles, apparently, the offense of "a bad choice and stuff" is more than enough to put a child at risk of spending 5 years in jail and having a felony on her record for the rest of her life.

Why Would You Expect Public Servants to Exercise Any Discretion?

After school officials exercise no discretion, neither does the school's resource officer.

In his report, Bartow PD school resource officer Gregory Rhoden, white, characterized the event as a "destructive device/weapons incident." Rhoden met first with assistant principal Durham, who was the official complainant. According to his report, Rhoden did not meet with the principal or anyone else other than Kiera Wilmot, whom he arrested, handcuffed, Mirandized, and questioned.

She told Rhoden the same story principal Pritchard said she told him, except that Rhoden reports there was a male friend who helped Kiera Wilmot do her bottle pop experiment. "At this time efforts are being made to identify Wilmot's friend," wrote Rhoden, a 1993 graduate of the same high school.

"I then contacted assistant state attorney Tammy Glotfelty via telephone. I advised a.s.a. Glotfelty of the circumstances of the case and she advised this officer to file charges of possessing or discharging weapons or firearms at a school sponsored event or on school property F.S.S. 790.115(1) and making, possessing, throwing, projecting, placing, or discharging any destructive device F.S.S. 790.161 (A)," Rhoden's report said.

It concluded, "I completed a cost affidavit and property receipt for the plastic bottle. The bottle was impounded as evidence."

Lodged As a Juvenile, Expelled by the School, At the Mercy of the Law

Kiera Wilmot was taken to the juvenile assessment center. She has remained there since April 22.

Bartow High School expelled her the same day, with no due process, saying there was no choice under the district's zero tolerance policy. At the end of that day, the school system seemed to be done with Kiera Wilmot - mission accomplished - unless she exercises her right to appeal to the school board.

Belatedly, the story emerged, apparently starting on April 24 with pretty straightforward coverage by TV station WTSP in Tampa. Posted online, the story drew almost unanimous sympathy for Kiera Wilmot, along with more general observations like "Florida incarcerates children at a rate higher than the national average. We need to stop the school-to-prison-pipeline" and "This country has become a malevolent joke" and "Where can we petition the stupidity of this paranoia?"

The answer to that question is two places: Change.org and ACLU.org.

Initial Reporting Is Shallow, Ducks Hard Questions

While WTSP reporter Melanie Michael, white, blonde, was even-handed, her report was remarkably shallow. Although she had Principal Pritchard on camera, she didn't get him to answer questions about why he thought the school's response was appropriate, or why he thought the punishment wasn't disproportionate, or what responsibility a school has for preserving its students' futures.

The intensity of the coverage of this story � and increased focus on the apparent injustice to Kiera Wilmot � picked up with an April 26 blog post on WTF Florida, on the web page of the Miami New Times, summarizing the event with a tone of disbelief under the headline: "Florida Teen Girl Charged With Felony After Science Experiment Goes Bad."

That blog post also reported the unsigned, official statement in standard bureaucratese released by the Polk County School District, mostly if not all white officials, presumably:

"Anytime a student makes a bad choice it is disappointing to us. Unfortunately, the incident that occurred at Bartow High School yesterday was a serious breach of conduct. In order to maintain a safe and orderly learning environment, we simply must uphold our code of conduct rules. We urge our parents to join us in conveying the message that there are consequences to actions. We will not compromise the safety and security of our students and staff."

What Consequences Are There For Bad Bureaucrats' Decisions?

The school system bases its literally mindless response on its "zero tolerance" policy, which apparently includes zero tolerance for assessment, analysis, deliberation, or proportionality.

The school district statement echoes the irrelevant and completely false argument attributed to unnamed "local authorities" that: "In this day and age, in this climate, you cannot be too careful." That is the argument from panic that, in effect, says the longing for safety justifies a police state.

"Unfortunately, what she did falls into our code of conduct � It's grounds for immediate expulsion," said the district's Senior Director of Strategic Communications/Community Relations Leah Lauderdale, white.

The official response to Kiera Wilmot makes a mockery of the Polk County Public Schools web site's promotional video that slickly touts "rigorous, relevant learning experiences," the effort to "prepare every student to enter college," and that "graduation for all students is Goal #1."

Reaction around the internet has been building ever since, overwhelmingly in support of Kiera Wilmot.

On May 1 on MSNBC, Chris Hayes, white, covered the story, talking to youth advocate Khary Lazarre-White, black, executive director of Bro/Sis. In his view, the Florida case reflects a wider American failure: "Really what it is, this is about adults who are refusing to do their responsibility - this is about parents, teachers, and school districts - and that needs to be the response, not law enforcement, because it really is a question about kind of an America do we want to see."

Florida May Be Worst Case, But the Problem Is National

Arguing that too many schools have stopped responding to children's needs in a child-centered way, Lazarre-White said:

"It's emblematic of a national issue. Over three million cases of expulsion and severe suspensions across the country, and it's a zero tolerance policy that is expelling children for the kinds of things that got us sent to the principal's office or talked to by a teacher � at worst � when we were in school."

On May 5, two days after Baton Rouge, Louisiana, TV station WAFB ran a summary of Kiera Wilmot's story, the station's online poll had 90% of respondents supporting her and calling her punishment too harsh.

Through all of this, the Wilmot family has stayed out of the public eye. Kiera's twin sister still goes to the same school, but she didn't join her friends who went on TV to talk about her. Their mother is a single, working mom. For all the support they've been getting from afar, locally they've had no openly public defenders.

But Kiera Wilmot does have an attorney, Larry Hardaway, black, of Hardaway & Associates in Lakeland, Florida. In an interview May 3 with Business Insider, he sounded like the first sane adult involved in the case.

Kiera Wilmot's Attorney Hopes to Prevent Further Harm

Hardaway reports that he has gotten the school board to stay its expulsion proceedings "until we can work out a resolution."

He says that he is negotiating with the state attorney's office, which has not yet decided whether to charge her as an adult or a juvenile, or whether to charge her at all - "We will have further negotiations next week about how to move forward without harming her."

Hardaway speaks highly of Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty, calling her "a very fine prosecutor�. There are prosecutors that are sometimes hardened, and aren't as sensitive as they should be, but that wouldn't be Tammy Glotfelty."

In a recent juvenile case that Glotfelty considered for about a month, she ended up deciding not to prosecute a 13-year-old boy for killing his brother when they were shooting at each other with BB guns. Some have criticized Glotfelty for calling that case, two white boys, a "tragic accident," but seeming to fail to approach Kiera Wilmot with the same degree of sensitivity.

Making a recommendation over the phone, based only on third party information, may strike some as less than careful, but if the prosecutors decided not to file any charges, as Hardaway is advocating, that would at least limit the damage to Kiera Wilmot.

In a Just Country, Wouldn't Someone Try to Make Kiera Wilmot Whole?

She'll still have personal and family trauma to deal with, and a financial burden, and likely social consequences if some unpleasant sort. Maybe she can go back to school and graduate (Goal #1!) and even go to college and have a decent life in spite of it all.

And Bartow High School will have achieved its goal of giving her a "rigorous, relevant learning experience" of an unusual, unfortunate, and sadly useful nature for navigating contemporary America. She will have an object lesson that those entrusted with your care won't always care for you, those entrusted with your protection won't always protect you, and those entrusted with guarding your rights won't always guard you.

It's not a pretty picture of an insecure homeland, where it's hard to find people in authority who can be trusted - but it is real.

And it wasn't a science project gone bad. It was an experiment that worked. As predicted.

Will Prosecutors' Reasonableness Be Shared by Education "Professionals?"

UPDATE: On May 15, the prosecutors announced that Kiera Wilmot would not face further charges if she successfully completes a Diversion Program agreement. The prosecutors office statement read, in its entirety:

Based upon the facts and circumstances of the case, the lack of criminal history of the child involved, and the action taken by the Polk County School Board, the State Attorney's Office extended an offer of diversion of prosecution to the child. The child and her guardian signed the agreement to successfully complete the Department of Juvenile Justice Diversion Program.

The pending case has been dismissed. No formal charges will be filed.

Attorney Hardaway told reporters the same day that he and Kiera Wilmot and her mother are continuing to discuss the situation with the Polk County School Board. After principal Pritchard recommended that the "good kid" be expelled, that recommendation was put on hold, awaiting action by the prosecutors.

The next formal step is for the expulsion appeal to be heard by a school board hearing officer.

Kiera Wilmot has now served a ten-day suspension and is completing 11th grade at an alternative school. Hardaway said his client is eager to clear her name because she's worried that people at her school think she's a "terrorist."

By their own comments, school officials have always known Kiera Wilmot was never anything like a terrorist. And now they have an opportunity to deliver a powerful, positive message by admitting they overreacted and expunging the whole episode from the record.

In education jargon, it's called a teachable moment. In life it's called fair.

And if school officials are looking for a role model, they can study the response of a former NASA engineer, Homer Hickam, to Kiera Wilmot's situation. Hickam, whose personal story was portrayed in the movie "October Sky," has given Kiera Wilmot a scholarship to the summer program at the United States Advanced Space Academy, part of the Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, and he's raising money for a scholarship for her sister as well.

As a teenager in West Virginia, Hickam conducted unauthorized experiments with rockets at his high school, which also led to police taking him away in handcuffs.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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