Why is the UN not in the Iraq intervention discussions?

In a new op-ed in Al Jazeera, Vartan Oskanian suggests that Iraq is ripe for a multilateral intervention against ISIS under the aegis of the United Nations. Oskanian, who served from 1998 to 2008 as Foreign Minister of Armenia and originally hails from Syria, is a longtime proponent of multilateralism in the Middle East and the world in general. He was one of the key figures in finagling post-Soviet Armenia’s (unusual) diplomatic position to be partially integrated with Europe and NATO but still strategically allied with and supported by Russia, without making everyone mad (a position Ukrainians right about now are probably wishing they could have secured).

In the essay, Oskanian outlines a number of reasons the UN should be involved, condemns the failure of everyone’s unilateralism in the region, and discusses the success of George H.W. Bush’s delimited intervention in Iraq with a multilateral coalition — and Soviet support. He also identifies some points where the Americans and Russians of today could cooperate in Iraq after the new low point reached in relations during the Crimea/Eastern Ukraine crises of this year.

One point that didn’t really come up in the essay is that this is one rare time when Russia and the United States both oppose the same faction, operating in two different countries. And China also isn’t a fan of non-state actors (and specifically jihadists) seizing large territories and oil fields. Usually, in the past 2 decades, vetoes from Russia or China (or both) have been the sticking point on suggested interventions in places.

But despite their discontent over alleged NATO overreach after they agreed to let an intervention resolution on Libya slide through in 2011, neither of them wants to see ISIS taking over parts of the region — which is the same position as the United States. Russia is selling military technology to both the Syrian and Iraqi governments already to help fight ISIS, and the the U.S. which doesn’t really support either government anymore still doesn’t want ISIS to gain strength within either country.

So why wouldn’t the 5 Major Powers (those with veto power) all agree on some kind of intervention — even a very limited one, probably in Iraq only — if it were brought to the UN Security Council? I mean, maybe they actually wouldn’t, but isn’t it worth trying? (That is, worth trying, if an intervention is going to happen at all. I don’t support such an intervention, but if it’s going to happen, it shouldn’t been unilateral.)

That in turn raises a good question. Why isn’t the UN even mentioned (publicly) in the US discussions on intervening in Iraq? Not even by the Obama Administration, which came into office rejecting the war and purporting to embrace international norms and multilateralism. Has everyone just totally given up on getting cooperation with Russia on anything ever again, at the UN or anywhere else? That’s going to get pretty self-fulfilling pretty quickly. Or has the administration just gone full unilateralist on us all?

Credit: NordNordWest, Spesh531 - Wikimedia

ISIS control on June 12, 2014. Credit: NordNordWest, Spesh531 – Wikimedia

US still labeling its longtime Kurd allies “terrorists”

Turns out the United States is still refusing to de-list its closest and longest political allies in Iraq — the two major Kurdish parties — as “tier III” terrorists (see update at the bottom for the definition) even after expending huge amounts of resources explicitly to protect them with a no-fly zone from 1991-2003, during which time they formed a competitive representative democracy on their own.

Earlier this year, Iraqi Kurdish media outlet Rudaw commented on the problem as follows:

Listing the KDP and PUK as Tier III terrorist groups stems from the classic US perception that any non-state militant actor rebelling against the state, may be listed as a terrorist group regardless of the goal the group seeks to achieve.

But now since that era of rebellion against dictator Saddam Hussein is gone, Iraqi Kurdistan is expecting the US to delist its parties from the category of terrorist groups.

 
This de-listing problem — which the State Department continually claims is being fixed — was news to me, though not surprising given how long Nelson Mandela got stuck on the terrorist watch list from way back in the day (when we were still allied with the Apartheid regime in South Africa).

But of all countries, Turkey, their past mortal enemy, is treating them better than the United States has been recently. (Or at least is positively treating the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party, with whom the ruling AK Party of Turkey has formed a strategic partnership, as explored on our blog in depth recently. Remains to be seen if they would be as friendly if the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, slightly more sympathetic to Baghdad than the KDP is, were to win the next elections.)

Flag-of-Iraqi-Kurdistan

Update for clarity, October 20, 2014: Below is the explanation of the admittedly nebulous “tier III” status as described by the website of the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services.

These organizations are defined by law as “a group of two or more individuals, whether organized or not, which engages in, or has a subgroup which engages in,” terrorist activity. Tier III organizations are also called “undesignated terrorist organizations” because they qualify as terrorist organizations based on their activities alone without undergoing a formal designation process like Tier I and Tier II organizations.

Instead, the determination of whether a group can be considered a Tier III organization is made on a case-by-case basis, in connection with the review of an application for an immigration benefit. Tier III organizations arise and change over time.

So, the list fluctuates a lot more than the tier I list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” or the tier II list of false charities and other criminal enterprises supporting organized terrorism. Thus, a tier III listing is less severe than a tier I formal designation, but it is not by any means flattering, and Americans could potentially still get into trouble for supporting such an organization, including the major Kurdish political parties in Iraq. Likewise, party supporters could be blocked from entering or moving to the United States. It’s also more puzzling, given that it’s a more flexible list, that the Kurdish parties haven’t been removed previously. Unfortunately, tier III is a persistently confusingly applied category that regularly covers U.S. allies and U.S.-recognized political opposition parties, according to the Baltimore Law Review.

Oped | American Unexceptionalism & The Republic

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The real story of the origins of the U.S. political system. Composite oped from two new essays (here and here) in The Globalist.

You’ve read the story before. A number of loosely aligned, merchant-dominated offshore territories of a European empire begin chafing at their distant monarch and the high taxes he imposed without giving them a reasonable say in their own governance.

Predictably enough, their mounting dissatisfaction is met with an increasingly overbearing response — including military deployments. That strategy is pursued until the provinces reach a breaking point.

They declare themselves free of the faraway king and initiate a rebellion. Not all the territories are persuaded to join. Some prefer to remain loyal to the crown.

The rebellion binds together a small collection of sovereign entities into a union, equipped with a weak, loosely formalized provisional government. Its purpose is to direct the union’s foreign policy and manage the rebellion.

Government after monarchy

Having declared themselves without a king, the newly independent elite must devise a replacement system of government for the continued union.

For a time, they consider the possibility of bringing in another member of the European nobility to serve as king. Such an invitation or election of an outsider as king was common in Europe for centuries, from Poland to Sweden to the Holy Roman Empire. Even the papacy is an elective monarchy.

But eventually the merchant elites and past commanders of the rebellion decide they have been doing fine without a royal. They are now content to continue to strengthen the temporary system as it is.

The exceptional story takes shape

These elite gentlemen look around at other precedents for other self-governing states without kings. Smaller free states — such as Florence and Venice — had previously installed non-hereditary systems of rule by the commercial elites and major families. They had called them “republics,” after the elite-run classical “Roman Republic.”

Elections in such systems are highly indirect and susceptible to manipulation. They are also restricted to a very small number of participants. Essentially, the only voters are members of the propertied, male elite — usually white.

After all, they make no secret of the fact that this exclusionary voting franchise suits the new country’s leaders’ aims anyway. They are not interested in creating a democracy. Rather they are keen to establish a republic insulated from the passions of the mobs.

It is then agreed that under the new union of rebel provinces, each member republic would send delegations to the union’s government, but they will be answerable to their home governments. This further would keep the regular people away from any major levers of power.

Finally, they devise an elaborate system of checks and balances. The ostensible purpose is to preserve the sovereignty of the member republics within the union. The bigger purpose is to prevent the “tyranny” of a central government and an executive. The union will have weak powers of taxation — only enough to mount a common defense of the member republics.

This is, of course, the story of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces in Netherlands and their departure from Spain — about two centuries before the United States constitution was ratified by thirteen former British colonies.

So much for America’s origin story being exceptional, as claimed for so long.

The Dutch precedent was a model, both to be emulated and avoided, for the framers of the U.S. Constitution and those advocating for its adoption. Far from being an “exceptional” idea, the original version of the United States was just the latest iteration of an existing system. It is what came after that that made it exceptional.

Almost before the ink had dried on the U.S. Constitution, the United States and its citizenry — indeed, even its government officials — began adapting the document in other directions the framers had never intended or anticipated.

That is probably for the best, from the world’s perspective, and from the country’s, since rule by a narrow slave-owning elite is not exactly a paragon of excellent governance for the world to follow.
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Vegas attack was domestic terrorism, tied to Bundy standoff

flag-of-nevadaYesterday’s shooting in a Las Vegas shopping center was an act of domestic terrorism, and the perpetrators were radical anti-government right-wingers with ties to both Neo-Nazism and the nearby Bundy Ranch standoff against the Federal government on public lands in Nevada.

Residents who spoke about the Millers all mentioned the couple’s relationship with Bundy. Oak Tree resident Sue Hale said the two told her they were in Bunkerville during the standoff, which occurred in April after federal authorities began conducting a roundup of Bundy’s cattle. Bundy had defied the government by grazing the cattle on public land without a permit. “Yap, yap, yap. They were always running their mouths,” Hale said.
[…]
After killing the officers, the couple covered the bodies with a cloth displaying the Gadsen, or “Don’t Tread On Me” flag — a Revolutionary War-era symbol that has since been adopted by the tea party. Investigators also found swastikas at the suspects’ apartment.

 
Their social media posts before the attack indicate that they were so hardcore about the Bundy standoff that the Bundys made them leave for making them look bad. The Bundy family denied any connection.


Arsenal For Democracy Radio – Background Discussion on Bundy Ranch Standoff:
Part 1 – Move Your Cows, Bundy – AFD 81


It’s important to call these acts what they are, to end the false dichotomy of how other terrorist attacks (by non-whites, inside or outside the country) are labeled and handled. Ultimately, however, the best way to respond to terrorism is to treat it, without glory, as criminal activity. In the words of L. Paul Bremer in the Reagan State Department’s official policy on counterterrorism:

Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them.

 
But until then, I don’t want a false double standard where some stuff is called terrorism and some stuff isn’t, depending on the attackers’ skin color or ideologies.

The Philadelphia Coup of 1776

US-flag-13-stars-Betsy_RossThe common narrative in the United States surrounding the Declaration of Independence is that everyone was so appalled by the British crackdown in Massachusetts and the lives lost at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 that all the leaders (and the majority of the populations) of the other colonies were swept up in a united front demanding the rejection of British rule (over a year later).

In reality, it was far more complicated than that. Many of the people were largely apathetic toward the whole matter one way or the other. But among those who were politically engaged, there was nowhere close to unity on the issue between the thirteen colonies (and that doesn’t even get into all the other British colonies in North America that flat-out refused to entertain the idea of joining even a conference to discuss recent events).

The lack of support for independence was so strong in coastal Georgia, for example, that the state’s leaders tried to un-sign from the Declaration of Independence and re-join the British Empire during the war. By war’s end, even after the Battle of Yorktown, the Province of Georgia was fully re-occupied by the British until it was handed over by the terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that formally accepted U.S. independence. New York City, similarly, was fairly solidly in support of continued British rule (to protect its trade interests and keep the other colonies from controlling its internal affairs) and also remained in British control until handed over by the treaty.

In certain colonies, such as Massachusetts, the local assemblies were suspended by the British or replaced by puppet governments, and they lacked local support — often to the point of having none of the laws followed by anyone. So in those cases, it’s fair to consider the self-proclaimed “Patriot” assemblies to be the more legitimate governments of those colonies for the purposes of declaring independence. But in other colonies, such as New York, the patriot faction was so deep in the minority that even the real local governments representing popular opinion were never going to go along with plans for independence. This being inconvenient, New York patriots simply formed their own assembly when the real assembly refused to send delegates to the Continental Congress.

That’s a bit iffy, to say the least, but it’s nowhere near as questionable as the decision by the Second Continental Congress to take matters into their own hands to impose the same on the Province of Pennsylvania. The elected local government there was insufficiently supportive of the position of a majority of the rest of the provincial delegations meeting at the Continental Congress, so those other states simply voted to “totally suppress” the government of Pennsylvania, to allow themselves to move ahead with plans for an official Declaration of Independence. Read more

May 27, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 85

Topics are net neutrality, Idaho, US political reform, Afghanistan withdrawal. People: Bill and Sarah.
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Discussion Points:

– Why does net neutrality matter?
– Should the Democratic Party in states like Idaho and Texas focus on candidate recruitment or party building? Should Congress have smaller House districts?
– What will happen to Afghanistan after the U.S. pulls troops out by 2016?

Part 1 – Net Neutrality:
Part 1 – Net Neutrality – AFD 85
Part 2 – US Political Reform:
Part 2 – US Political Reform – AFD 85
Part 3 – Afghanistan:
Part 2 – Afghanistan – AFD 85

To get one file for the whole episode, we recommend using one of the subscribe links at the bottom of the post.

Related links

– AFD: The loss of net neutrality will change everything (here’s why)
– NYT: FCC: New Net Neutrality Rules
– NYT Editorial: Creating a Two-Speed Internet
– Mother Jones: The Idaho GOP Gubernatorial Debate Was Total Chaos
– Reuters: Obama plans to end U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan by 2016
– AFD: France announces indefinite Sahel deployment

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And don’t forget to check out The Digitized Ramblings of an 8-Bit Animal, the video blog of our announcer, Justin.

Alt-history novelists have got nothing on Cliven Bundy

Cliven Bundy, anti-government rancher and political theorist extraordinaire, has been releasing videos with even more information on his extremely “unique” view of American — and indeed Western — history and the American social contract. Buzzfeed collected some of the “best of” made-up facts from Bundy’s video.

My favorite is:

They [the Pilgrims] had a central government, which was Europe. Was the strongest army in the world. And they ruled with unlimited power. And there was a point that they decided they wasn’t going to live that way any more. And so they had a revolution.

 
This and others are so amazingly off-base I’m not sure I could have intentionally made up alternative history this great as a joke. (Long-time readers may recall my extensive alt-history-based satire, before this site or SBBS existed.)

To recap: This man — who is trying to argue based on an arcane and incorrect legal theory that the Federal government can’t make him pay to graze cattle on Federally-managed public lands — literally believes the 1620 Pilgrims had a revolution (in 1776? — unclear) and flat-earth-sailed to America, because they needed to escape a totalitarian government that ruled over all of Europe with a massive army. And somehow, despite a total lack of knowledge on the country’s actual history to the point of not knowing facts the rest of us learned in elementary school, he is a “patriot.”

Somewhere in the afterlife, Oliver Cromwell (England’s real-life dictator from 1653-1658, long after the Pilgrims had left and long before King George III reigned) is silently weeping at the thought of how much phenomenal power he would have had in the 17th century Bundiverse.

1651 Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" on the English Civil War and the proper form of government.

1651 Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan” on the English Civil War and the proper form of government.