Why We Should Keep the (Whole) 14th Amendment

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Margaret Thatcher once said, “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” When a country is united by ideals and not bloodlines, defining citizenship is a unique challenge, one that the United States has grappled with time and time again in its history.

In recent weeks, many of those seeking to be the GOP’s candidate for president have begun talk of getting rid of a constitutional amendment in order to redefine who is a citizen. Frontrunner Donald Trump and others would like to see the United States do away with the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to anybody born within US borders and subject to the the jurisdiction of federal laws (i.e. the baby’s parents are not foreign diplomats or have other formal relationships with foreign governments). Rick Ungar, a contributor for Forbes writes:

It turns out that those who have long enjoyed portraying themselves as the “Guardians of our Constitution”, through strict interpretation of the same, and the proponents of law & order as the bulwark of an orderly society — of course I’m speaking of Republicans — are the very folks who no longer have much use for the Constitution when it fails to meet their desires or live up to their expectations.

 
The argument around the 14th Amendment is largely due to frustration over so called “anchor babies”, a derogatory term for babies born to illegal immigrants in the United States supposedly under the pretense that the child will somehow help the parent gain legal status. It is true that for the past 147 years, all children born within US borders are legal US citizens, regardless of their parent’s legal status.

However, the idea that these babies and US citizens are helping to grant their parents legal status in the United States is a fallacy for which there is no legal backing. In fact, in 2011 there were 5,000 children in state care or foster homes because their parents had been deported. In 2013, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement deported 72,410 people who had at least one child who was a US citizen.

Still, the term “anchor baby” and the vitriolic desire to get rid of the 14th Amendment persist. The amendment was a Reconstruction Amendment, adopted on July 9, 1868, with the goal of providing citizenship to African-Americans who had formerly been slaves with no protection under the law. The Citizenship Clause of the Amendment overruled the Supreme Court’s findings in Dred Scott v. Sanford, which stated that African-Americans, even those who were free, were not American citizens and therefore could not sue in federal court.

When the 14th Amendment was originally debated, there were a few mentions of children born to immigrants on the debate floor. However, in 1868 there was no limit to immigration into the United States, meaning there was no illegal immigration at the time of the amendment’s adoption. In 1898, the Supreme Court cleared this up in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, by ruling that the children of immigrants born in the US are indeed entitled to citizenship.

Since that time, America has continued to grapple with immigrant policy and citizenship laws, but with little exception, those born within the borders of the United States are citizens of our country. While American immigration policy leaves much to be desired, the 14th Amendment has provided continuity and stability to the definition of citizen. Our country’s greatness is derived from the diversity of our citizens and the uniqueness of our history. Paternity tests or another arbitrary way to obtain citizenship would rob future generations of the philosophy and ideology on which this country was founded and continues to grow.

14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, section 1. (National Archives of the United States.)

14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, section 1. (National Archives of the United States.)

Yemen: Saudis “liberate” Aden; Qaeda waltzes in immediately

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yemen-map

Saudi Arabia liberates and stabilizes Yemen like this:

“Dozens of al Qaeda militants were patrolling the streets with their weapons in total freedom in a number of areas in Tawahi [port district, Aden]. At the same time, others raised the al Qaeda black flag above government buildings,” a resident told Reuters.

He said the flag was also flying over the administrative building of the port, although a port official later said that the flag was flying at the gate of the port’s complex.
[…]
Yemen’s Deputy Interior Minister Brigadier General Ali Nasser Lakhsha played down the threat posed by the gunmen in the Aden neighborhoods.
[…]
Residents say policemen and government army units are now largely absent from Aden, where services have lapsed and the ruins from earlier battles have gone unrepaired.

“All these guns and gunmen everywhere is a thing that Aden has never seen before…Fear is spreading that it will eventually give way to chaos, and more wars in the future” said Yemeni analyst Abdulqader Ba Ras.

 
That was on Saturday, August 23rd. They withdrew on Sunday after first trying to seize a military base. They still control the populous southern port city of Mukalla (see map above).
Read more

Beirut’s Garbage Uprising

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lebanon-flag

Lebanon is a country close to my heart, but (probably for the better) it hasn’t been dominating global news for a few years. Headlines began popping up this weekend, however, along the lines of
– “Many injured in Beirut ‘you stink’ protest over rubbish” or
– “Thousands protest against Lebanese govt over uncollected rubbish” and simply
– “Thousands protest against government in Beirut” — that one from the local paper for their photo gallery.

For comparison, Beirut, Lebanon is about half as populous as Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. This story for those not following it, much like the heaps of garbage in Beirut, has been building up for some time now in the capital city.

Basically, what happened is that the not-very-elected national “unity” government of Lebanon is so dysfunctional at anything other than literally not re-entering a civil war that they failed to act in time to secure a location for a major new landfill capable of taking the capital’s trash, even though they had plenty of advanced warning that the existing site was past capacity and was going to have to close.

So, the trash has just been piling up in the streets, valleys, rivers, and the ocean for the past month, even during the huge heat wave that affected much of the Middle East (and has sparked similar reform protests in Iraq). Some Beirut residents have just burned their trash in the street, but that creates toxic air pollution that lingers in the city. In a small and delicately balanced country like Lebanon, finding a place to put all this trash really is a national-level issue requiring dedicated internal negotiations. Very little of which has happened.

Demonstrations have been escalating. The latest protest — documented at the headlines above — reached at least 4,000 participants, who clashed with riot police outside government buildings. The slogan in Beirut, as in the Arab Spring Revolutions of late 2010 and early 2011, is simply “The people want to topple the regime!” — even for a garbage crisis.

There’s something to be said for the human spirit and temperament that even with everything else falling apart and the security situation in chaos, as is the case in Baghdad and Beirut, the daily dysfunctions and quotidian aggravations still motivate people to mobilize and demand better of their governments instead of just putting up with it. Even in the United States, during the American Civil War, you can read examples of people in both the North and South rioting against their governments and their own forces over unfair policies, food shortages, and so on.

We’ve also, in recent weeks, begun seeing protests in government-held areas of Syria by loyalists demanding better treatment and services from the government they’ve poured their blood, sweat, and tears into propping up since 2011.

All politics — and war — is ultimately local. We often think of the purpose of government in big-picture terms like “national defense” and “providing security” but people still have expectations of their governments even when those points have gone out the window. The longer the big disorder drags on without resolution, the more irritating the little disorders become.

At the end of the day, when the trash stinks, somebody’s got to take it out. The crisis in Beirut might just be the most potent metaphor ever for bad governance and corrupt state failure the world over.

Counter-narratives in New Orleans

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Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

arsenal-bolt-logo

From the forthcoming August 23, 2015 issue of the New York Times Magazine – “Why New Orleans’s Black Residents Are Still Underwater After Katrina”:

In this frustration, he represents what might be called the black Katrina narrative, a counterpoint to the jubilant accounts of Landrieu and other New Orleans boosters. This version of the story begins by noting that an African-American homeowner was more than three times more likely than a white one to live in a flooded part of town. Where Landrieu sees black and white coming together, many African-Americans recollect a different New Orleans: rifle-carrying sheriffs and police officers barricading a bridge out of an overwhelmed city because they didn’t want the largely black crowds walking through their predominantly white suburbs; a white congressman overheard saying that God had finally accomplished what others couldn’t by clearing out public housing; a prominent resident from the Uptown part of the city telling a Wall Street Journal reporter that in rebuilding, things would be ‘‘done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically’’ — or he and his friends weren’t moving back.
[…]
Ten years after Katrina, only 36 percent of the Lower Ninth Ward’s population has returned, according to the New Orleans Data Center.

 
Editor’s note: Keep an eye out in the coming days for Arsenal For Democracy’s audio documentary on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with extensive firsthand narration. We started major recording on August 18th, and we’re working on finishing up shortly.

US proudly announces re-killing same ISIS guy again

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WhiteHouse.gov, August 21, 2015:

Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, also known as Hajji Mutazz, the second in command of the terrorist group ISIL, was killed in a U.S. military air strike on August 18 while traveling in a vehicle near Mosul, Iraq, along with an ISIL media operative known as Abu Abdullah.

 
Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2014:

Defense officials said the operations to kill senior and midlevel Islamic State commanders are beginning to weaken the group’s leadership structure in Iraq.
[…]
U.S. military strikes between Dec. 3 and Dec. 9 killed Abd al Basit, the head of Islamic State’s military operations in Iraq, and Haji Mutazz, a key deputy to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s top leader, officials said.

 
If he “dies” in a U.S. airstrike one more time, he’ll hold the same honor recently taken in Syria by Muhsin Al-Fadhli (similarly named but from a rival group), who has now “died” in U.S. airstrikes three times to much fanfare. Unlike the ISIS fellow killed in Iraq, the other guy is the leader of the probably fictional terrorist organization the US has labeled the “Khorasan Group” (see previous link for more on that).

It’s almost like we’re not being presented with accurate information to be able to assess the progress of our various interminable and boundless wars!

h/t @DavidKenner

Op-Ed | “Saudi Arabia and the US: More military misfires”

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A Royal Saudi Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter aircraft, May 1992, Operation Desert Shield. (Credit: U.S. Department of Defense / TECH. SGT. H. H. DEFFNER)

A Royal Saudi Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter aircraft, May 1992, Operation Desert Shield. (Credit: U.S. Department of Defense / TECH. SGT. H. H. DEFFNER)

Excerpts from “Saudi Arabia and the US: More military misfires” — my August 13, 2015 op-ed with Stephan Richter for Al Jazeera English.

The Saudi way of handling the crisis in Yemen shows they are following in the US’ footsteps far too closely:

No concept has proven to be as strategically short-sighted as the assumption of military superiority.

It leads powerful nations to give in to the temptation to bomb their way out of a problem – as if anyone could.

While in Washington this lesson is still sinking in, Saudi Arabia, the United States’ major ally in the Gulf region, seems to have learned nothing from the ill-fated US strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[…]
The presumed wealth of advantage of the US and Saudi Arabia over Iraq and Yemen does not serve either country well.

This “abundance” tempted them to go for broke – all out attack mode – and continues to delude them into believing they have “won” the battle, while they ignore that the war is being lost.

The US at least had the excuse of being an outsider to the region, the Saudis, who live on the Arabian Peninsula with their Yemeni neighbours, can’t tap into that (weak) excuse.

Read the full piece.

Recently from AFD on this topic:

– “Yemen War Update: Still an inhumane catastrophe”