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FOCUS: Under Trump, US Has Special Operations in More Countries Than It Has Ambassadors |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=35143"><span class="small">Paul Gottinger, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Friday, 30 March 2018 12:06 |
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Gottinger writes: "The United States now has Special Operations Forces in more countries than it has ambassadors, according to a new analysis from an academic at Tufts University. The US has Special Operations deployed in a record 149 countries, while US ambassadors are currently working in just 144 countries."
U.S. Air Force pararescuemen, 83rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, secure the area after being lowered from a U.S. Air Force HH-60 Pave Hawk during a mission on November 7, 2012, in Afghanistan. (photo: Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder/Air Force)
Under Trump, US Has Special Operations in More Countries Than It Has Ambassadors
By Paul Gottinger, Reader Supported News
30 March 18
 he United States now has Special Operations Forces in more countries than it has ambassadors, according to a new analysis from an academic at Tufts University. The US has Special Operations deployed in a record 149 countries, while US ambassadors are currently working in just 144 countries.
The death of four US Special Operations personnel in Niger – a location in which most Americans had no idea US forces were operating – has brought increased scrutiny to Trump’s more aggressive use of Special Operations Forces.
Much of the task of carrying out the US global “war on terror” has fallen on the backs of Special Operations. Since the end of the Bush administration, there has been a 150% increase in the number of countries in which Special Operations are operating. Now, almost three-quarters of the nations on Earth have US Special Operations Forces operating, with very little oversight. Trump used Special Operations to disastrous effect last year when he authorized a raid in Yemen, which killed 30 civilians, resulted in the death of a US Navy SEAL, and “recovered no actionable intelligence.”
Since Trump came to office, the US State Department – tasked with carrying out US diplomacy – has deteriorated significantly. Trump has failed to make ambassadorial appointments in many important countries, and a total of 44 countries are currently without a US ambassador.
Senior staff at the State Department has bled out significantly since Trump became president. This year, 16% of senior diplomats ended their service with the State Department. Five out of six of the most experienced US ambassadors have retired or will retire shortly.
This month, over 200 former US ambassadors and senior diplomats addressed a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressing concern over the deterioration of the State Department and the declining “influence of American diplomacy.”
President Trump very publically undermined his previous Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and pushed him out to get in Mike Pompeo, a hawk. Trump’s appointment of Pompeo and John Bolton – for National Security Advisor – is further evidence that the administration is sidelining traditional US diplomacy.
Last week, the New York Times Editorial Board wrote, “There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton is to lead the country into war.” The Times warned that with the appointment of Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump has given in to his most dangerous instincts. “Mr. Bolton, in particular, believes the United States can do what it wants without regard to international law, treaties or the political commitments of previous administrations.”
Following Bolton’s appointment by Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted, “John Bolton was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war and has supported military action against North Korea and Iran. He was too extreme to be confirmed as UN ambassador in 2005 and is absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now."
Even a former Bush administration official, Richard Painter, took to Twitter to warn of the dangers of Bolton’s appointment.
“John Bolton was by far the most dangerous man we had in the entire eight years of the Bush Administration. Hiring him as the president's top national security advisor is an invitation to war, perhaps nuclear war. This must be stopped at all costs.”
The progressive foreign policy group Win Without War has warned that Trump is assembling a “war cabinet.”
This is a time when strong diplomatic muscle is needed more than ever; however, both Pompeo and Bolton are likely to push for careless policy moves like backing out of the Iran nuclear deal and demanding unreasonably harsh conditions for any deal with North Korea. Neither of these policies bodes well for preventing the US from moving toward a major war.
These new appointments should be seen as especially dangerous given that Trump has already demonstrated a willingness to use US force recklessly.
The Trump administration more than doubled US drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia last year. Trump has also restarted drone strikes in Pakistan after Obama paused them in 2016. Earlier this month, a US drone strike killed 13-year-old Amer Ali al-Saqra Huraidan and severely injured his teenage cousin in Yemen. Amer is one of 8 Yemeni civilians killed in US drone strikes this month.
In Iraq and Syria, the Trump administration is responsible for killing more civilians in US air strikes than Obama killed there throughout his entire presidency. Researchers have also noticed a disturbing new trend under Trump, a rise in the number of incidents where entire families are killed in US air strikes.
The Trump administration has also lifted the few constraints Obama placed on US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, despite Saudi’s 3-year-long bombing of Yemen, driving it into a major humanitarian crisis. This administration has championed US arms sales as creators of US jobs, even when those sales go to countries with an unsavory human rights record.
“The United States, and indeed the rest of the world, is on a dangerous path,” said Win Without War.
“Trump is sending a clear signal that diplomacy and rule of law have no place in his administration.” The group warns that Trump’s recent appointments of Bolton and Pompeo should be opposed by “anyone who cares about our nation’s security and hopes to stop the President’s march to war.”
Paul Gottinger is a staff reporter at RSN whose work focuses on the Middle East and the arms industry. He can be reached on Twitter @paulgottinger or via
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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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FOCUS: The Supreme Court Seems Befuddled, Again, on Gerrymandering |
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Friday, 30 March 2018 10:41 |
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Toobin writes: "There's been a lot of good news recently for opponents of partisan gerrymandering."
People including Bill Millhouser protesting gerrymandering outside the Supreme Court. (photo: Tom Brenner/The New York Times)
The Supreme Court Seems Befuddled, Again, on Gerrymandering
By Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
30 March 18
here’s been a lot of good news recently for opponents of partisan gerrymandering. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court just revoked a map of congressional districts that had been designed to help Republicans, and substituted one that gave Democrats a greater chance of winning more seats. In a similar vein, a U.S. district court in North Carolina also struck down a Republican gerrymander in that state. And, in perhaps the most consequential case, five Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, hearing an argument in October, appeared ready to reject a Republican gerrymander in Wisconsin, and thereby put an end to the partisan redistricting that has been a principal feature of American politics in recent years.
But that momentum may have come to a halt. (The new Pennsylvania map will go into effect, because the court acted pursuant to state, rather than to federal, constitutional law; the North Carolina case is on hold pending further appeals.) At the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning, in a strangely desultory argument, the Justices, for the second time in a year, took up the subject—this time, in Maryland—but they appeared further from a consensus, or even a majority, than they did during the argument of the Wisconsin case. It’s always dangerous to infer too much from Justices’ statements and questions during oral arguments, but the hints in today’s proceedings suggested that the Court, as a whole, may not be ready to put an end to gerrymandering.
The Maryland case, argued under the name of Benisek v. Lamone, differs somewhat from the Wisconsin litigation. Benisek concerns only a single district, which the Democrats in the state legislature redrew after the 2010 census. As the legislators intended, the new district lines meant that the Republican incumbent, U.S. Representative Roscoe Bartlett, lost to a Democrat, John Delaney, who still holds the seat. The Wisconsin case, in contrast, deals with a challenge to every district in the lower house of the state’s legislature. The core issue, though, is fundamentally the same in both cases: Can a state legislature draw district lines with the principal goal of helping one political party and hurting the other?
As is so often the case with the current Supreme Court, these decisions look as if they will hinge on the vote of Anthony Kennedy. Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, as well as the customarily silent Clarence Thomas, all appear likely to allow gerrymandering to continue. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan seem determined to outlaw the practice. On Wednesday, Kennedy made it clear, as he has in the past, that he finds the practice of gerrymandering distasteful, particularly because the state legislatures appear to be punishing some voters for their political views, in violation of the First Amendment. Questioning Steven Sullivan, Maryland’s solicitor general, Kennedy said, “Suppose the Maryland constitution had a provision that required that partisan advantage for one party be the predominant consideration in any districting. Lawful or not?” Sullivan conceded that such a law would violate the constitution. Kennedy followed up by asking, rhetorically, “How is this case different?” In other words, that provision might not be part of the state constitution, but the state was acting as if it were—that is, using partisan advantage as the predominant factor in redrawing the lines of the district.
The problem is how to create a remedy for this sort of viewpoint discrimination. In various ways, Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch all made the point that redistricting is invariably a political process, so there is no way that partisanship can be entirely scrubbed from it. Indeed, Ginsburg and Kagan made similar arguments. The question of the remedy was so muddled that Breyer even put forth the notion that the Court should ask the parties for an entirely new set of briefs on it. No other Justice picked up on that idea, but the mere fact that Breyer proposed it suggests that in the Wisconsin case (which presumably has already been decided) the Court has not produced a workable standard embraced by a majority of the Justices.
It’s perhaps easy to have sympathy for the Justices in this instance. Partisan redistricting is easier to identify than to rectify. Several of them have heard other cases on the subject over the past decade or so (without settling the law). And, as the Justices dawdle, the problem is growing worse. With the advent of ever more powerful computer technology, politicians can draw legislative districts with chilling precision; they can guarantee victory or defeat before a single vote is cast. The 2020 census is drawing near, and the district lines for every legislative seat in the country will soon be redrawn. The time for the Supreme Court to address the problem is now.
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Spring Will Be Here Before You Know It. Prepare to Be Enlightened. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=47905"><span class="small">Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website</span></a>
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Friday, 30 March 2018 08:46 |
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Keillor writes: "Maybe it's true that the light dispels the darkness. Spring will be here before you know it. It is likely to come suddenly. Prepare to be enlightened."
Garrison Keillor. (photo: NPR)
Spring Will Be Here Before You Know It. Prepare to Be Enlightened.
By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
30 March 18
 ate March is a time of rare unanimity here on the northern tundra when everyone — socialists, monarchists, anarchists, humble peasants, mighty tycoons — is ready for the snow to melt and green grass to appear and a warm breeze blow through the open window, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon and so we must live with the fact that the world is beyond our control.
The president must have felt that way Sunday night: the leader of the Free World and yet he was powerless to prevent a woman from going on “60 Minutes” and talking about having sex with him in 2006 at Lake Tahoe though she wasn’t attracted to him but thought he might put her on his TV show.
On the other hand, you can go on YouTube and see video footage from security cameras at Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas that shows how utterly simple and ordinary it is to haul carts of luggage containing assault rifles and ammunition up to your suite on the 32nd floor and use them to kill 58 people and injure 851 in a crowd of concertgoers a couple nights later. I’m sure the shooter felt fully in control the whole time, including the moment he shot himself.
My daughter marched on Saturday with thousands of young people, in favor of controls on the sale of deadly weapons. I grew up in an era when the word “school” and the word “shooting” were alien to each other, and that is no longer true. Every child in America has had to practice a school lockdown.
And Sunday night, I skipped “60 Minutes” in favor of supper with family and hearing a college sophomore talk about school, how he enjoys reading John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and studying French and looking forward to his semester abroad in Cameroon. This is the real story, not infidelity or mass shootings, but ambition: the urge, no matter the season, to venture forth and experience the world and gain some useful understanding.
I’m engaged in some of that myself. A young cousin of mine told me that she wishes she knew more about our family’s history and so that is now my assignment. I earned my living writing fiction but apparently it is the truth she wants and how does one find it in a family that was so good at keeping secrets?
Our colonial ancestors who were loyal to the Crown and fled to Canada when the Revolution broke out — I don’t find letters from them laying out their principles; they simply packed up their goods and left before they could be lynched. My great-great-grandfather David Powell who left his wife and sons in Illinois in 1859 and went off to the silver rush in Colorado for four years — was he, in fact, running away from the Civil War? We have no record of any of our people fighting for the Union. Our grandfather was born in New Brunswick and came to Minnesota to help out his sister whose husband was dying of TB: he was a man of great probity, a devoted Christian, an elder in the church, and yet we have word from a contemporary of his that Grandpa was “quite the hellraiser” in his youth. What do we not know and do we want to find it out? There are several cases of marriages that, though done in a rush, did not precede the birth of the first child by the proper length of time. There is a lonely grave in the family cemetery of a cousin who died of a botched abortion by a physician who had done prison time for treating the fugitive John Dillinger in 1934. She lived near my parents for a couple years and was a friend of my mother’s. We do not know her story and we wish we did.
As for me, I did my best to die young but survived and now, looking back, I find that my miserable youth is a dim memory, but I clearly recall several sterling plays I made on a ballfield, and the day I married my wife on 99th & Amsterdam in New York and walked to our wedding dinner on 86th, and the brilliant day I turned 70 aboard a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Maybe it’s true that the light dispels the darkness. Spring will be here before you know it. It is likely to come suddenly. Prepare to be enlightened.
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Vermont Congressional Delegation Opposes Vermont Voters |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 29 March 2018 13:31 |
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Boardman writes: "The politics of American imperialism are alive and well in Vermont, where elected officials are defending the military-industrial war-making machine against voters who reject ruling class priorities."
Opponents of the F-35 fighter jet slated for deployment to the Vermont Air National Guard base in South Burlington hold a news conference in Burlington. (photo: Glenn Russell/Free Press)
Vermont Congressional Delegation Opposes Vermont Voters
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
29 March 18
What happens when the lives of citizens get in the way of political egos?
he politics of American imperialism are alive and well in Vermont, where elected officials are defending the military-industrial war-making machine against voters who reject ruling class priorities. At the symbolic center of this democratic confrontation is the notorious F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the world’s most expensive weapons system, designed to kill in many ways, including a nuclear first strike. And the few times Vermonters have had the chance to vote, they’ve voted against basing this loud, health-harming, housing-destroying offensive war machine in the state’s most densely populated area. Now it’s coming to a head in a people versus career politicians face-off.
At a Town Meeting on March 6, Burlington voters chose, by a 55% majority, to ask the Air Force to base the F-35 in some other state. On March 26, the Burlington City Council, by a 9-3 vote, forwarded that request to Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson to “replace the planned basing of the F-35 with a basing of a low-noise-level plane with a proven high safety record….” For whatever reason, the council request left out the rest of the ballot resolution’s request: “… proven high safety record appropriate for a densely populated area” (perhaps because that densely populated area is NOT Burlington). The City Council asked Secretary Wilson to respond by May 1.
Vermont’s quisling Congressional delegation – Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, Independent senator Bernie Sanders, and Democratic congressman Peter Welch – made what looks like a cheap shot effort to influence the council vote at the last minute. Late on the afternoon of March 26, Vermont’s “representatives” issued a joint statement saying they stood by their years of pushing for the F-35 basing at the Burlington Airport, which is in South Burlington (which has no voice in the decision).
Unable to justify their decision, the Vermont delegation stonewalls
Consistent with the delegation’s past behavior, their pro-F-35 statement addressed none of the substantive issues, and none of the three would answer questions from the media. The imperious attitude of these three is also consistent with the rest of Vermont’s bi-partisan leadership for the past decade. They have all behaved with imperial detachment, refusing to ask sensible questions, refusing to listen to opponents in any field (medical, educational, social, even military). They continue to act as if this were an imperial polity, in which they announce their decision, refuse to explain it or justify it, but expect everyone else to accept it. For Vermont, this anti-democratic policy-making has worked surprisingly effectively for a surprisingly long time.
And it’s not over yet. Before the city council resolution can go to the Air Force, Burlington mayor Miro Weinberger has to sign off on it, and the notoriously weaselly Democrat continues to ponder what, if anything, he will do in accord with the clear wish of his voters. Although the F-35 issue is many years old, Weinberger hasn’t indicated what new concerns could possibly be troubling him. He has till April 16 to sign or veto the resolution. In the event of a veto, the city council’s 9-3 vote would be enough for an override, if the votes hold.
As Mayor, Weinberger is at the crossroads of powerful contending forces. As a Democrat, he is among those talked about as a possible successor to Senators Welch and Sanders as they age out of office. How he goes on the F-35 could alienate either the Vermont electorate or the Democratic establishment and its military-industrial base, especially the vocal and endlessly self-serving Vermont Air National Guard. The mayor also owes his office partly to the power brokers of real estate and development in Burlington (that overlap with the Leahy circle).
Say it ain’t so, Bernie!
For Bernie Sanders to be aligned with forces he has railed against on the campaign trail is especially odd. When Sanders was Mayor of Burlington in the 1980s the city was affectionately known as “the People’s Republic of Burlington.” That was exaggeration for effect, but also reflected a basic human decency of the time and place. Now, as one Burlington voter put it at an F-35 hearing: “People have had enough of putting the interests of rich white dudes over average citizens.”
Sanders, whose record on issues of war and military has never been strong, is up for re-election this year (with no apparent opposition). He recently led a futile effort to get the Senate to pay attention to US participation in the US-Saudi genocidal war on Yemen, though he didn’t frame it that strongly. Why he has been so timid and quiet about the F-35 for all these years is a mystery. Like Leahy, Sanders voted for the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), the legislation that still serves as the legal basis for all the wars the US is waging today. Only Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat from Oakland, California, voted against that AUMF.
Like Sanders, Peter Welch is also up for re-election with a $2.1 million campaign fund already (he was unopposed in 2014). He hasn’t had serious opposition since 2006. This year Welch has two primary campaign opponents who have raised less than $30,000 between them. But Welch is also in the supposed line-of-succession for Vermont’s Senate seats, even though at 71 he is only slightly younger than Leahy, 77, and Sanders, 76. Welch’s official website says nothing whatsoever about the F-35, but he does have a 2013 story about his favoring regulation of private unmanned drones as a danger and a nuisance. Residents of South Burlington and Winooski might appreciate the irony of his unconcern for danger and nuisance that the F-35 will inflict on them.
All three members of Vermont’s Congressional delegation seem strangely unable or unwilling to challenge the political intimidation of the Vermont Air National Guard (VTANG). Their worshipful public adoration of VTANG is out of all proportion to any real-world accomplishments. VTANG, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, has fetishized the F-35, attempting to render it beyond criticism. But the Air Force never wanted to base the F-35 in South Burlington in the first place. Only the obsessive insistence of Leahy and guard leaders has brought it this close, and that requires considerable lying and disinformation along the way.
What did VTANG know and when did VTANG know it?
The city council’s March 26 resolution illustrates the dishonesty of the process that has surrounded the F-35 for years. The city council appends questions to its resolution that would not be questions at the end of a process that has any integrity. After years of supposed conscientious investigation by the Air Force and others, the city council still has no reliable information about how loud the F-35 is. The city council doesn’t know if there is an alternative mission for VTANG because VTANG says there’s not, but the Air Force has told the court there is (and common sense allows the obvious inference that the Air Force can make a new mission for VTANG any time it chooses). The city council doesn’t know what flying time the F-35 will have, what fuel it uses, or how dangerous its material components are to the environment. The city council is ignorant because the supporters of the F-35 have deliberately avoided objective, truthful answers to the hard questions. That’s the way it is in a corrupt system.
Have any of the responsible officials involved in the decision-making done due diligence on the F-35 over the past five years? Available evidence suggests not. They would rather force their totemic F-35 onto a community with no voice and take their chances with the consequences. Such political shuck and jive as the Vermont Congressional delegation, VTANG, the Pentagon, and others continue to peddle would be criminal negligence in any conscientious civil society.
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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rom the moment Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Republican critics ranted about the CFPB’s supposed lack of accountability. Now that one of those critics, Mick Mulvaney, has assumed control of the bureau, the attackers have fallen silent—even as Mr. Mulvaney disregards legal mandates and dodges congressional oversight. This turnabout shows Republicans never really cared about accountability. They only wanted the agency to be less effective at stopping financial firms from cheating people.
