RSN: Juan Cole | How American Cities Were Reduced to Esper's "Battlespace": From Fallujah to Minneapolis

03 June 20

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Juan Cole | How American Cities Were Reduced to Esper's "Battlespace": From Fallujah to Minneapolis

Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Bush's war of aggression contained within itself the accumulated evil of the whole, and now that evil is spreading out to turn us all into Fallujans."

 

he Bush administration’s war of aggression on and military occupation of Iraq that began in 2003 shifted the United States to a militaristic society. Some 2.7 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, an astonishing number. The Bush administration began the practice of sending to civilian police departments military equipment no longer needed in Iraq– everything from Kevlar vests to armored vehicles. Community policing in some towns and cities gave way to the spectacle of militarized police, heavily armed and armored, and inevitably separated from the public they were supposed to serve and protect. 

The Bush administration spent trillions on the unprovoked and worthless Iraq War, money that could have been used to train and finance minority university students and entrepreneurs. At the same time, it cut taxes on the wealthy, which is a way of saying that it cut government services for the middle and working classes.

I grew up in a military family, had uncles who fought in WW II, and have nothing but respect for Veterans and active duty service personnel. When I’ve been privileged to address US military audiences, I’ve felt honored to do so. So in this column I am not putting them down in any way. I am, however, putting down their civilian bosses.

The Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was a civilian bureaucrat during those wars (though he had served with distinction as an infantry officer in the Gulf War). As a Bush administration official (deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy), he breathed in the atmosphere of illegality created by the 2003 war of aggression. On Monday, he told the nation’s governors that “I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was present on the call with the governors, during which Trump threatened to violate Posse Comitatus by sending in the US army to the states to do law enforcement over the heads of the governors. Milley has a duty to say that he will not obey such an illegal order. Actually in 1958 Congress specified a two-year prison term for anyone who acted as Trump said he would act.

Then Esper and Milley accompanied Trump on his Great March from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church after Bill Barr ordered military police illegally to attack peacefully assembled protesters from Lafayette Square.

Esper had no business being involved in the march on on St. John’s church, where Trump had had military police tear-gas clergymen. 

James Miller, himself a former undersecretary of defense for policy, resigned from the Defense Advisory Board in protest over Esper’s involvement, which he called a violation of Esper’s oath of office.

But above all Gen. Milley should resign for having been present during an unconstitutional act of repression. Milley gives evidence of being what is called in the trade a “weasel,” of giving his superior whatever he wants. We may well have a constitutional crisis in the beginning of November, and citizens of the American Republic have a right to know that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is above the partisan fray and loyal to the Constitution. After Monday’s events, I don’t think we have that assurance.

Where did this way of thinking even come from?

In 2003 when Bush aggressively made war on Iraq and militarily occupied the city, initially a lot of Iraqis were on the fence. In the city of Fallujah, then about the population of Miami, Fl., people gradually turned against the Occupation. The US military took over a school as a base, and parents complained that it would ever after make their children a target. The US colonels wouldn’t listen. There were crowd protests. Someone used the demonstration as a pretext and opportunity to fire on US service personnel. They fired back. From that incident things spiraled out of control. People in Fallujah were Sunni Arabs and were religiously conservative. They sympathized with Palestinians and knew that US was backing Ariel Sharon in his efforts to repress them. People became increasingly radicalized. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid terrorist organization gained a foothold. In spring of 2004 4 contractors were killed, infuriating George W. Bush.

After his reelection, Bush was determined to make Fallujah safe for patrolling US soldiers. I am not sure it ever really was.

He launched a major invasion of the city. We are told that the US Air Force played an important role through “precision bombing.” Rebecca Grant writes, “For several weeks before the main assault, air strikes and artillery fire targeted key sites in the city as they were identified. The hunt for insurgents evolved into battlespace shaping.”

What isn’t said is that most of Fallujah’s residents ended up being displaced, many living in tents in the desert, and much of the city was reduced to rubble. That is “battlespace shaping” for you.

Esper clearly thinks of Cleveland and Oakland as “Fallujahs,” as “battlespaces” departing from the “right kind of normal.” People in Fallujah had resented being invaded and ruled by foreigners who reduced them to 65% unemployment. Some 40 million Americans just lost their jobs, in part because of the ineptitude of the administration of which Esper forms a part (South Korea is better governed and did not close down, using large scale testing, contact tracing, and mask-wearing instead).

A significant part of the American elite was shaped by Bush’s wars to think about dissidence as the equivalent of insurgency and to see challenges to the status quo as illegitimate.

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg concluded, “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Bush’s war of aggression contained within itself the accumulated evil of the whole, and now that evil is spreading out to turn us all into Fallujans.

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Protester holds an American flag upside-down. (photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty)

CIA Veterans Who Monitored Crackdowns Abroad See Troubling Parallels in Trump's Handling of Protests
Greg Miller, The Washington Post
Miller writes: "The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad - the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority."

In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations.

“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

Helt, now a professor at King University in Tennessee, said the images of unrest in U.S. cities, combined with President Trump’s incendiary statements, echo clashes she covered over a dozen years at the CIA tracking developments in China, Malaysia and elsewhere.

Other former CIA and national security officials rendered similarly troubled verdicts.

Marc Polymeropoulos, who formerly ran CIA operations in Europe and Asia, was among several former agency officials who recoiled at images of Trump hoisting a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington after authorities fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the president’s path of protesters.

“It reminded me of what I reported on for years in the third world,” Polymeropoulos said on Twitter. Referring to the despotic leaders of Iraq, Syria and Libya, he said: “Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.”

The impression Trump created was only reinforced by others in the administration. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper urged governors to “dominate the battlespace” surrounding protesters, as if describing U.S. cities as a foreign war zone. Later, as military helicopters hovered menacingly over protesters, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, toured the streets of the nation’s capital in his battle fatigue uniform.

“As a former CIA officer, I know this playbook,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) said in a tweet. Before her election to Congress last year, she worked at the agency on issues including terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

One U.S. intelligence official even ventured into downtown Washington on Monday evening, as if taking measure of the street-level mood in a foreign country.

“Things escalated quickly,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of his job. He emphasized that he went as a concerned citizen, not in any official capacity. After seeing tear gas canisters underfoot, he said, he “knew it was time to go” and departed.

Former intelligence officials said the unrest and the administration’s militaristic response are among many measures of decay they would flag if writing assessments about the United States for another country’s intelligence service.

They cited the country’s struggle to contain the novel coronavirus, the president’s attempt to pressure Ukraine for political favors, his attacks on the news media and the increasingly polarized political climate as other signs of dysfunction.

Trump supporters have defended his handling of the unrest, and his trip across Lafayette Square as a display of the strength needed to restore order in dozens of cities where protests have led to looting, fires and violence.

Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (R) said it was “hard to imagine” any other president “having the guts to walk out of the White House like this.”

But there were also indications that senior members of the administration were uncomfortable with the president’s outing and eager to minimize their role in it.

A senior Pentagon official said Tuesday that neither Esper nor Milley knew when they set out to accompany Trump that police were about to charge through seemingly peaceful protesters or that they would play supporting roles in a photo op.

Even away from the cameras, Trump has assiduously cultivated the aura of a strongman. Earlier Monday, he had chided governors as “weak” for failing to employ adequate force in the face of mounting protests.

“If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time,” Trump said. He offered no words on how to ease tensions in crowds that have massed largely in anger over the death of George Floyd, an African American man who was killed while being pinned to the ground, a knee against his neck, by police in Minneapolis.

Brett McGurk, a former top U.S. envoy to the Middle East who spent two years in the Trump administration, said the president’s words — recorded by participants and shared with news organizations — would only embolden the world’s autocrats and undermine U.S. authority.

“The imagery of a head of state in a call with other governing officials saying, ‘Dominate the streets, dominate the battlespace’ — these are iconic images that will define America for some time,” said McGurk, who led U.S. diplomatic efforts to counter the Islamic State terrorist group. “It makes it much more difficult for us to distinguish ourselves from other countries we are trying to contest” or influence, he said.

In recent years, U.S. officials have urged restraint or denounced crackdowns against protesters or vulnerable groups in Russia, Iran, Turkey, Malaysia, Syria and other countries.

Even this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lectured China about its efforts to prevent citizens of Hong Kong from holding a vigil to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

“If there is any doubt about Beijing’s intent, it is to deny Hong Kongers a voice and a choice,” Pompeo said in a statement that was met with derision on Twitter because it coincided with crackdowns urged by Trump in the United States.

The seeming hypocrisy in the U.S. position has not been lost on foreign targets of American pressure or criticism.

Ramzan Kadyrov, a Chechen leader who has faced U.S. sanctions for alleged human rights abuses, said Tuesday that he was “watching with horror the situation in the United States, where the authorities are maliciously violating ordinary citizens’ rights,” according to reports from Moscow.

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Rep. Steve King. (photo: AP)

Steve King: Republican Congressman Known for Racist Rhetoric Loses Primary Race in Iowa
Daniel Strauss, Guardian UK
Strauss writes: "The controversial Iowa Republican congressman Steve King has been ousted in Tuesday's primary, losing his re-election race to the state senator Randy Feenstra."
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Police officer shouts at AP journalist. (photo: Wong May-E/AP)

ALSO SEE | ACLU: Police Violated Rights of Journalists
Covering Minnesota Protests

Police Shove, Make AP Journalists Stop Covering Protest
Associated Press
Excerpt: "New York City police officers surrounded, shoved and yelled expletives at two Associated Press journalists covering protests Tuesday in the latest aggression against members of the media during a week of unrest around the country."
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Protesters. (photo: Kristin Murphy/Deseret News)

Black Lives Matter Co-Founder: Protests Are the Result of "Police Terror With No Accountability"
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "We have created a system that overrelies on law enforcement and prioritizes their money, their budget, their needs over everything else."




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Afghan villagers carry the body of a civilian killed by an airstrike by U.S.-led forces in eastern Afghanistan during a protest in the city of Ghazni, west of Kabul, on Sept. 29, 2019. (photo: Ramatullah Nikzad/AP)

More Than 70 Children Killed in Just 10 Airstrikes in Afghanistan, Report Finds
Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept
Hussain writes: "One hundred and fifteen civilians died in just 10 airstrikes in the U.S. war in Afghanistan in the last two years; more than 70 of them were children."
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Brazil burnt, logged and bulldozed a third of the area lost, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia placing second and third. (photo: Getty)

Data Find Rainforests Lost 14,000 Square Miles in 2019
Deutsche Welle
Excerpt: "Satellite data collated for the World Resources Institute showed primal rainforest was lost across 38,000 square kilometers (14,500 square miles) globally - ruining habitats and releasing carbon once locked in wood into the atmosphere."

The count by the University of Maryland means that 2019 was the third most devastating year for primary forests — comprising old-growth trees and highly diverse wildlife — since scientists began such surveys two decades ago.

Brazil burnt, logged and bulldozed a third of the area lost, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia placed second and a distant third, concluded WRI experts from the Global Forest Watch (GFW) project.

"Primary forest loss was 2.8% higher in 2019 than the year before and has remained stubbornly high for the last two decades despite efforts to halt deforestation," exclaimed the study's authors.

Brazil's losses preceded President Jair Bolsonaro's legislative moves to loosen rules that would otherwise protect regions from minerals extraction and agriculture.

"Hot spots" identified in satellite images, said the WRI, had corresponded with reports of land-grabs inside the Trincheira/Bacaja indigenous reserve of Brazil's Para state.

Deforestation across the Amazon was nearing a threshold, calculated another in March, that once crossed would see it morph into arid savannah within 50 years.

Indonesia was "one of the few bright spots in the global data," wrote WRI fellow Frances Seymour and colleagues, referring to a 5% loss decline since 2018.

Tougher enforcement and bans on new oil-palm concessions, had all helped, said Arief Wijaya, expert at World Resources Institute Indonesia.

Bolivia Has 80% Higher Loss 

In its Global Forest Watch report, the WRI highlighted Bolivia, saying its removal of primary forest and surrounding woodlands — to produce soy and range cattle in 2019 — had been 80% higher than any of its previous years on record.

"Its highly biodiverse Chiquitano Dry Forest was particularly affected, with reports that nearly 12% of it burned," said the study.

Other countries with severe losses had been Peru, Malaysia and Colombia, followed by Laos, Mexico and Cambodia — from 1,620 square kilometers and 800 square kilometers in primal forest lost.

Indigenous Rights Protect Forests Too

WRI's Seymour said a "mounting body of evidence" suggested that legal recognition of indigenous land rights "provides greater forest protection:

"We know that deforestation is lower in indigenous territories," Seymour said.

Global Forest Watch (GFW) project manager Mikaela Weisse said, if left undisturbed, areas stripped of virgin rainforest would "take decades or even centuries" to get back to their original state.

Those virgin rainforests destroyed comprised but a third of all tree cover (119,000 million hectares, including plantations) lost across the global tropics in 2019, said the study. 

Its authors again warned that slashing forests had major implications for global goals to curb climate change. 

"At least 1.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions are associated with 2019 primary forest loss, equivalent to the annual emissions of 400 million cars," said the authors. 

Trees are estimated to absorb about a third of all planet-warming emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, including petrol and diesel-powered vehicles.

Pandemic Weakens Enforcement 

The current Covid-19 pandemic had changed dynamics, said Weisse, weakening enforcement of forest-protection laws and leaving rural families desperate to feed themselves back home after losing jobs in cities.

In April, scientists grouped within the Global Carbon Project estimated that coronavirus-induced economic slowdowns would trim carbon dioxide emissions by more than 5% year-on-year.

It was "something not seen since the end of World War Two," said project chair Rob Jackson, professor of Earth system science at Stanford University, California.

But, recalling the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré at England's University of East Anglia, forecast in April that emissions were likely to rebound if structural changes were not instituted.

Glasgow's COP26 Postponed 

Last week, host Britain confirmed that UN climate talks due in Glasgow, known as COP26, had been postponed a year until between November 1 and 12 2021.

Experts involved in those long-running negotiations insist that global emissions must start dropping this year to avoid irreversible impacts, including polar melts, record hot weather, rogue storms, and ocean level rises.

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