The 'Prerogative State' Is Upon Us

by Karen Button

This past week, the US Army cleared four top-ranking officers, including Lt. General Ricardo A. Sanchez, of any wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse/torture case. This, despite the memo that Sanchez, Iraq’s senior commander at the time, authorized 29 interrogation techniques, 12 of which exceeded the Army’s own Field Manual. The same 12 techniques are also clear violations of the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is signatory.

This concludes the tenth investigation into the Abu Ghraib crimes, in which no one but individual, low level soldiers has been held accountable. This despite the infamous Pentagon document, signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and leaked last year, which outlined techniques Rumsfeld acknowledged could be “interpreted” as violations of the Geneva Conventions. As reported by Seymour Hersh last May, the Pentagon’s secret “Copper Green” operation “encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence”.

Also this week, a US military investigation found that the soldiers who shot and killed Italy’s high-ranking intelligence officer Nicola Calipari last month were not guilty. Calipari had negotiated the release of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had been held captive in Iraq. The two were traveling to the Baghdad airport on a special road used by US military, with their authorization. The US military maintains the car was driving too fast and did not respond to hand signals, both of which are disputed by Sgrena’s eyewitness account. Even the Italian government, one of Bush’s few remaining allies from the Coalition of the Willing, has refused to accept the findings.

These are but the latest in a pattern of flagrant disregard for the rule of law by the Bush administration when the law does not suit its purpose. There is a name for this and it is one with which Americans ought to familiarize themselves.

In 1941, German jurist Ernst Fraenkel used “prerogative state” to describe the emergence of Nazi Germany during the 1930s. He describes this system as one in which a dual state is set up: one that operates not under the rule of law, but under the rule of prerogative, and the other, which he calls the “normative state”.

He writes, “By prerogative state, we mean that governmental system which exercises unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by legal guarantees, and by the normative state an administrative body endowed with elaborate powers for safeguarding the legal order as expressed in statues, decisions of the courts and activities of administrative agencies.”

Fraenkel’s brilliant analysis goes much deeper, examining the complex relationship between authoritarianism and capitalism, and the struggle between the normative and prerogative state. Although he is speaking of Germany in the 30s, he could be speaking of the United States today.

The prerogative state is not new under Mr. Bush, though he is perhaps the most honest in his open disdain for the rule of law.

For example, when 120 nations signed on to the 1998 Rome Statute, better known as the International Criminal Court (ICC), the US, under Clinton, opposed the idea of trying US nationals in an international court, yet supported the extradition of others for the same purpose. To illustrate, while the US supported the extradition and trial of Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia’s former “tyrant,” it refused Kissinger’s extradition for his alleged role in the murderous government of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.

Since Mr. Bush took office, this dual state perspective has taken firm root, particularly in the international realm and most blatantly with the illegal, pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Mr. Bush surrounds himself with those who show a contempt for legal compliance, such as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales with his now infamous opinion that the Geneva Conventions are archaic. (Mr. Gonzales made this comment while he served as legal counsel to Mr. Bush, prior to his nomination as attorney general, making Congress’s confirmation that much more egregious.)

The US prerogative state has conducted illegal roundups and detainment of Arab-American citizens, atrocities at Guantanamo Bay and in the prisons of Afghanistan and Iraq, the wanton destruction of Falljuah, and numerous war crimes against civilians in this same city.

The US has now threatened military action if any US national is held at the Hague. Have they perhaps accurately read the mood of the international community who, according to opinion polls, are more frightened by Mr. Bush than they are of Mr. bin-Laden?

Small wonder the US is seeking bilateral agreements with other countries to exempt American officials from prosecution by the ICC and threatening to cut financial aid if they don’t sign.

The worst nightmare for a prerogative state would be forced compliance to the same legal standards to which others are forced to adhere.

Where Are All The Heroes?

by Karen Button

I recently attended a Red Cross “Heroes Breakfast” with my uncle who was being honored for helping rescue a hiker in the Chugach State Park. Like most true heroes, he was reticent about being called a hero. I was proud of him; proud enough to attend an event full of people I would rarely encounter otherwise.

Feeling slightly uncomfortable at his sponsoring table populated with cheery petrochemical employees, I reminded myself I was there to support my uncle’s moment of recognition and could live with a little discomfort.

My unease grew though when sentimental nationalism flooded the room of 500+ as they stood to salute the small cadre of military personnel marching with the Alaska and United States flags in tow. Without question, right hands were placed over hearts to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing God Bless America and bow their heads while a Christian prayer was delivered.

The petrol employees were all smiles and good heartedness, and justifiably so. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and their local chapters do an amazing job each year. They are often the first aid organization on the scene of house fires, natural disasters and, more often than not, war. But I wondered, as all present sang, “stand beside her and guide her,” if their good intentions ever bumped up against the reality that their government was in the business of creating many of the victims they so willingly help.

Take Iraq, for example. Two weeks ago I read the completely outlandish and, I believe, irresponsible headline in the Anchorage Daily News, “Ecstatic for Iraq”. (I noticed they’ve changed it for the Internet version.) The article brayed about a regiment of Stryker vehicles newly arrived from Fairbanks, a creepy sight I passed on my drive up there, being sent to Iraq and Alaska’s biggest Army deployment since Vietnam.

An “ecstatic” soldier who was interviewed couldn’t wait to get to Iraq yet doesn’t want to offend Iraqis while he’s there. Uneducated, at best. But, in a war that was needlessly started and in which over 1,500 American and 100,000+ Iraqi people have been killed (carelessly used by a government who cares more for lining the pockets of their CEO friends than about any real security in this world), the Anchorage Daily News was silent. Maybe this is partly why this soldier is so naively enthusiastic about going to a country so dangerously repressive that the ICRC and their partner organization, the Iraqi Red Crescent, has adopted exceptional modus operandi, giving priority to those detained by occupation forces and foregoing excursions into much of the ravaged country deemed most dangerous in the world.

In an article published last fall in Israel’s Al Hayat, ICRC Delegate-General for the Middle East and North Africa said, “The current violence in Iraq is having the effect of eroding respect for international humanitarian law.” There is no question who the responsible party is in that statement. While the resistance plays a significant role in the violence, the resistance is in direct response to Iraq’s occupation.

The list of crimes against humanity committed by the US is unfortunately long and grows longer each day the occupation continues.

Currently, a record 17,000 Iraqis are being held (most without being formally charged) in US-operated prisons where young soldiers like the one mentioned above are brainwashed into thinking their patriotic duty includes torture. These are the prisons so notorious in their abuses that the ICRC/Iraqi Red Crescent has made visits to them priority. Others run by Iraqi security forces are such a security risk that the ICRC has not even visited them. (Remember though, that many Iraqi government operations, like security, are still under US jurisdiction.)

I’m certain the folks at the Red Cross Heroes Breakfast could not imagine responding to the type of crisis generated by prison abuse. Perhaps they could, however, imagine themselves responding to the type of humanitarian disaster that was Fallujah after its November siege. But what would be their reaction when they were denied access, as the Iraqi Red Crescent was for weeks by US forces? And how would they feel once they did gain access and found that the city’s hospital, which had been stormed by troops, patients handcuffed on the floor, and surgical procedures interrupted, was still occupied by the US military?

In the midst of that Hero’s Breakfast I wanted to ask these questions. I have no doubt that every person there was deeply committed to helping others, but it’s time to broaden the net and not let the hypocrisy of this country’s nationalism cloud the good work intended. The ICRC, for obvious reasons, doesn’t take political stands, but it’s time that the people involved at the local levels do and become another kind of hero. If not for their own sake, then at least for the sake of young soldiers whose mistaken ecstasy about entering a war zone makes them a victim one of their sister chapters must respond to.

A Bitter Anniversary for Iraq

by Karen Button

Two years after the US-sponsored media event where Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled in Firdaus Square, Iraqis gathered last weekend to pull him down again in effigy. This time the event was for real; Bush and Blair were also toppled while 300,000 Iraqis called for the true liberation of their country through the immediate departure of foreign forces.

Even the mainstream U.S. media, which attempted to portray the demonstrations as viciously anti-American, had to admit that the "mostly peaceful" march called for an immediate end to the occupation. Posters and flyers with the slogan "USA Out!" were the most prominent message. Iraqis want the U.S. out of their country, and for good reason.

After decades of rule under Saddam Hussein and twelve years of some of the most brutal sanctions imposed in modern history, Iraq was a devastated country when the US invaded in March 2003. Five hundred thousand children had died under the sanctions from easily preventable diseases and the UN’s Iraq Program director Denis Halliday had resigned in 1998 in protest, calling the US-led program “genocide."

A country that was once arguably the best-educated in the Middle East now bears the distinction as the only country in the world whose literacy rate dropped during the 1990s.

This is the Iraq the Anglo-American Coalition of the Willing was going to free, although from whom was not clear. They would have better served Iraqis to stay at home and just call off the sanctions they themselves had imposed.

Under the US “Shock and Awe” (a term borrowed from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”) strategy to liberate Iraqis from their despotic leader, more than 100,000 have been killed, liberating them only from their bodies.

Malnutrition has nearly doubled in children since the US invaded Iraq in 2003 - from 4 percent to 7.7 percent – the level of some African countries – according to a study released in November by the Norway-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science. Keep in mind that before the invasion, twelve years worth of sanctions had already severely impacted the health of Iraq’s children. In a country where childhood obesity had been a problem, roughly a quarter of children were now malnourished. Thus, it was not a healthy population of children who were the baseline for this study. Adult populations are less studied, but it’s been widely reported that without food rations, many Iraqis would now be starving.

Security in Iraq is at its worst ever, with women and children hardest hit. For fear of rape and kidnapping, most stay at home now when previously – ironically under Saddam Hussein’s rule – they could walk the streets at any time without fear.

Prison torture, disappearances, house raids and collective punishment by George Bush’s Anglo-American military have replaced prison torture, disappearances, house raids and collective punishment by Saddam Hussein’s military.

Cancer rates post-Persian Gulf War soared 400 times the norm after approximately 375 tons of depleted-uranium munitions were used. As a result, babies born without brains and with organs on the outside of their bodies have increased dramatically since 1990, or pre-Gulf War.

According to a report from Project Censored 2005, the incidence of anophthalmos (being born without eyes) in Iraqi babies in 2002 was 250,000 times greater than the norm. These are the results of the brief 1991 war. During the first two months of the current war alone, the UN and the Pentagon estimate up to 2,200 tons of depleted uranium munitions were used. (Current figures are unavailable, but let’s just say that after Mr. Bush declared “mission accomplished” in May 2003, the rate of bombing fell to half, that would put the amount of UM used thus far at 12,650 tons.) These munitions have a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Two years after the Anglo-American forces destroyed the electrical system during the invasion, electricity is on a sporadic basis only; in Baghdad, for example, six hours per 24 is the average.

Fuel prices have skyrocketed as well. In a country that is oil-rich and had never known gas shortages, two-day long queues are now the norm.

The unemployment rate was about 30 percent under Saddam Hussein. It is now 50 – 70 percent.

No wonder 300,000 mostly Shi’a Iraqis, those who were most repressed under Saddam Hussein, turned out last weekend to call for an end to America’s illegal occupation.

Happy Anniversary, Iraq.

When Bush Comes To Shove ... Resisthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

by Karen Button

“Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.”
~ Secretary of State Alexander Haig

Haig said that during New York’s 1982 million-plus protest against nuclear arms. The comment is more than simply obnoxious, it is a moment of honesty. Government officials know their policies cannot be implemented without funding, and this money comes from the pocketbooks of its citizenry. Which also is why tax resistance in this country has a long tradition as a means of protest.

The earliest recorded war tax resistance came in 1637 when the Algonquin Indians opposed taxation by the Dutch for improvements to a local fort. But probably the most famous war tax resister was Henry David Thoreau who spent the night in a Massachusetts jail for protesting the Mexican-American war by refusing his taxes. Although Thoreau was not a pacifist, he did not believe in slavery nor the imperialist push into Mexico. His time in jail eventually became the basis for his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.”

Over a century later singer Joan Baez made the news in 1964 when she announced she would withhold 60% of her income tax – the amount earmarked for the Viet Nam war campaign. She was joined by professor Noam Chomsky, feminist Gloria Steinham, and some 500,000 other Americans, most of whom were involved in the “Hang Up on War” campaign by resisting the 3 percent Federal Excise Tax levied on phone bills to cover huge expenditures for war.

Each of these individuals has a unique story about their decision to resist war taxes, yet all came to the singularly compelling truth: If you want peace, stop paying for war.

This is also the motto of the War Tax Resister’s League, an organization whose members have refused all or part of their federal taxes since its inception some 60 years ago.

Believing war to be a crime against humanity, War Resister’s International was founded in London in 1921, when World War I was raging across Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Since then affiliates have formed in 32 countries on every continent, including the mostly Muslim countries of Chad and Turkey. The United States affiliate was organized in 1923 by men and women who opposed WWI, many of whom had been jailed for refusing military service.

“Liberation” as a Form of Colonialism
Decades after the formation of these groups the world’s wars have become much more complex and globally dangerous, yet the rhetoric behind them remains the same; liberation is still being used by colonizing nations as an excuse to take over other’s lands and resources.

When the British raised the Union Jack in Baghdad in 1917 their promises were much the same as the Americans’ today. “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies but as liberators,” proclaimed Gen. Stanley Maude, commander of the British forces.

Then, as today, what fuels a nation’s military potential is its participation by the general public, either willingly or unwillingly. Military service and taxation are just two examples. Yet, what’s different about today’s militaries are both their size and power, with Bush’s America being the largest.

The United States spends more on its armed forces than do the next 24 highest-spending countries combined, which include (in order of expenditure) China, Russia, Japan, United Kingdom, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran. In fact, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which maintains figures for worldwide military spending, the US accounted for half the world's spending in 2003 (the latest figures available). This was before the war on Iraq. And, with fourteen permanent US military bases part of the New Iraq Deal, American missiles now have a global reach, sealing any argument about the US being an empire.

The cost of maintaining the world’s largest military is not cheap, although the US government would like you to think so. According to the Unified Budget for 2006, only 19 cents of every tax dollar is spent on the military, while 42 are spent on Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. While this sounds like a well-cared-for citizenry, in actuality the government is spending nearly half its budget, or $1,027 billion (up $92 billion from last year), on past and present military expenses* while homeless people sleep on the streets and the numbers of children without adequate health care continues to rise.

Also not cheap are the so-called reconstruction efforts in Iraq and the nearly-forgotten Afghanistan, which have served up $881 billion in US taxpayer monies to non-competitive contracts to huge multi-nationals in 2004 alone. For the most part, those contracts are without oversight and numerous reports, like those of Public Citizen, have exposed serious breaches in contract completion. In Iraq, for example, little has been done since Bush’s victorious claim in May 2003 to permanently restore basic services such as electricity and potable water to large parts of war-damaged areas.

A Moral Obligation
For thousands of US citizens, the hypocrisy, on top of the illegality of the war, was the proverbial last straw, and they have declared “enough is enough.” They are now resisters. Theirs is not an armed struggle, but a struggle against arms; here, both soldiers and war resisters have found common ground.

Prior to tax day 2004, Joan Baez and friends were again in the news when they issued “An Appeal to Conscience,” calling it a “moral duty to speak out against, and avoid cooperation with” the US war on Iraq through “refusal to pay taxes used to finance unjust wars, along with refusal by soldiers to fight in them.” Unfortunately, one year later and two years into the illegal occupation, the Appeal still stands.

Since the beginning of the current war in Iraq the Pentagon estimates that 5,500 soldiers have deserted. A few have made their opposition to the war public, but the vast majority have just quietly gone home. While their reasons for leaving may never be known, clearly the consequences of desertion outweighed what they faced in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The number of those who refuse their taxes is difficult to count. According to Ruth Benn, head of the US National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, they have never conducted a survey. However, she estimates there are probably around 8,000 who directly refuse their taxes and thousands more if those who refuse only the phone tax are counted. Those numbers rise and fall according to current issues. The number of resisters swelled during the 80s in opposition to the nuclear arms race, as they did during the Viet Nam era, and are beginning to once again.

Benn says the organization is receiving more website hits and more phone calls since the start of the Iraq war, as people have questioned what else they can do besides demonstrate. But, as Benn notes, war tax resistance can feel like a daunting step for people to take. And in the current culture of fear (further generated by the Patriot Act) many may be more afraid to take that step today.

Yet war tax resistance runs the gamut of risk taken – from not paying the federal phone bill tax (which raises about $6 billion every year), to living below the taxable income level, to not paying income taxes and redirecting the money to groups whose values one supports.

For many, the decision to resist is a process, and takes time. Consider Benn’s journey. She became active with the peace movement in 1979 in Western Massachusetts when the hot issue was President Carter's institution of draft registration of 18 year-old males. While tabling her local post office with information, she knew, as a woman, she would never have to face registering. War tax resistance was a step she could take to put herself on the line in a similar way as she was asking men to take.

“I have resisted at some level since that time, phone tax or living below taxable level for some years,” Benn said. “ And since 1987 I have been an income tax resister, pretty much 100%. I file and refuse to pay the IRS. I redirect the money to war relief, local social service, peace and justice groups. Once I had some money taken from a bank account for one year, but mostly I just get a lot of letters from the IRS. I work freelance now.”

Benn added that these days it's a very good feeling to be a war tax resister, despite what the consequences may be in the future.

The US is unique from many countries in that we file taxes, versus having taxes removed prior to receiving a paycheck. This gives Americans an opportunity that many others don’t have, and having the largest military in the world, a certain responsibility as well.

Now is the time to make Alexander Haig and the rest of the neo-conservatives quake in their military-issue boots, and to show the rest of the world a different side of the United States; when Bush comes to shove – resist. So, if you want peace, stop paying for war.


For more information, go to the US War Resister’s League at www.warresisters.org or to War Resister’s International at www.wri-irg.org Also, a campaign to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace is in motion. For more details go to www.dopcampaign.org


*These figures from the well-respected 2006 Tax Piechart. Published annually by the War Resister’s League, it is an analysis of the US Federal Unified Budget. Current military spending adds together money allocated for the Dept. of Defense plus the military portion from other parts of the budget. For example, spending on nuclear weapons (without their delivery systems) amounts to about 1% of the total budget. Past military represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt in proportion to the amount of debt incurred by military operations.