Obama's New Approach to Iran

Obama's New Approach to Iran
By Jerome Grossman

The Obama administration will take part directly in international negotiations with Iran aimed at ending Teheran's nuclear program. It is the latest move in a shift in U. S. policy toward Iran, a very positive step toward direct engagement with Iran that President Obama promised during his campaign for president, a step that merits strong approval.

This expression of conciliation contrasts sharply with U.S. policy since 1979 and especially with the belligerence of the Bush administration, a belligerence that has not inhibited Iran but has alienated U.S. allies in Europe. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "There is nothing more important than trying to convince Iran to cease its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon". However, Iran has been suspected of developing the nuclear bomb for at least 20 years and has insisted that its centrifuges are enriching uranium only for peaceful use. As Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said at the United Nations in 2007: "The world does not need to prove to Iran that Iran is building an atomic bomb. Iran must persuade the world that it does not want the bomb." Yet, Mohammed El-Baradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency that monitors Iran's facilities, does not accuse Iran of bomb making capability.

The situation is complicated by widespread disapproval of Iranian human rights violations, its combination of religion and politics, as well as the insults directed at Israel, Jews and the West. The Iranians justify their conduct by reminding the world that the United States and its allies supported Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran, 1980-1988, that cost Iran a million lives. On April 3, the London Times printed an article headlined, "Only Obama can save Iran from Israeli bombs", citing the hawkish Netanyahu government in Israel. When Netanyahu travels to Washington next month, Iran is expected to dominate the conversations. Israel will not attack Iran without tacit approval from America - we hope. But time is running out. This could become Obama's biggest challenge as he assumes the mantle of keeper of the peace

President Obama deserves credit for putting the U.S. on the diplomatic track with Iran. He may have been influenced by the financial crisis in the U.S... As David Wessel put it in the Wall Street Journal on April 9, "For 15 years, the American people have been told they could have it all: costly wars, expansion of Medicare to cover drugs, health insurance for those without, more money for schools-and tax cuts for most of them. They deserve to be told that they can't have it all in the future."

Apparently, Obama has ruled out another costly war and will concentrate on the desperately needed domestic programs. Two unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are two too many. Obama will avoid the third war, gaining his objectives by diplomacy and soft power.

Barack Obama's War

Barack Obama's War
By Jerome Grossman

President Obama seems to be serious about a major effort to conquer Afghanistan even if it requires military operations in Pakistan without the permission of that ally. Must every U.S. president pursue a war to mark his time in office? Is it the required role of a superpower to fight all over the world? Iraq War number two was George W. Bush's war. Iraq number one belonged to his father. Bill Clinton's war was in Bosnia and Serbia. Lyndon Johnson's presidency will be marked forever by Vietnam. Was America in danger in any one of these wars?

Obama tells us that his war will be a long-term effort lasting at least five years, to root Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan although both are now hiding in the wilderness of Pakistan. 38,000 US troops are now in Afghanistan. 17,000 more are on the way, 4000 additional will arrive to train Afghan troops, and General David Petraeus has requested 10,000 more for next year. Some military experts think that 250,000 soldiers plus an equal number of civilian contractors will be necessary to pacify Afghanistan, a country 50% larger than Iraq, with forbidding mountainous terrain where guerillas hide.

U. S. forces are regularly attacking the Taliban and other insurgent Pakistanis with unmanned drone airplanes and secret Special Forces on the ground. The Wall Street Journal reported on April 1 that the air raids have stoked anger among ordinary Pakistanis many of whom are ambivalent about the U.S. fight against Islamic militants but see the strikes as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

The Pakistan Taliban chief goes much further, threatening an attack on the U.S. homeland in retaliation. “Soon we will launch an attack on Washington that will amaze everyone in the world." The CIA takes such threats seriously, the “blowback" effect carried out by a weak enemy incapable of matching strength on the battlefield but impelled to retaliate against the hated invader, the defiling infidel.

The U. S. military and diplomats are finding it difficult to obtain the necessary cooperation of the Pakistani government and military against the Taliban. Despite heavy subsidies from the U.S. government, Pakistan’s Islamic leaders worry more about India, their historic Hindu enemies against whom they have fought three wars since 1948. Right now the two nations are actually fighting another undeclared war in Kashmir. Crushing the Taliban would weaken Pakistani forces in the event of another Indian war, dividing the people of Pakistan even more than they are now.

With Al Qaeda dispersed and Bin Laden in hiding, it is difficult to see the American purpose in invading this land of poverty and banditry, a land that has not been subdued by previous superpowers. Does Obama believe that he cannot afford not to conquer Afghanistan, that the political fallout in America from a military withdrawal might endanger his presidency? I hope not. Afghanistan is unimportant, certainly not worth the lives and the money, not even from an imperial viewpoint. The U. S. is already the only superpower, no economic or military power can compete. The only danger is over extension, the unnecessary expenditure of people and resources, a characteristic of a wasteful empire.

Obama's Strategy on Afghanistan

Obama's Strategy on Afghanistan
By Jerome Grossman

It is difficult, even impossible, to accept President Obama’s “New strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” as described by him in a formal speech on March 27. It fails by imperial and non-imperial standards.

First the imperial: Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA agent, reports in his book Nemesis: “The Carter administration deliberately provoked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan….. In his 1996 memoir, former CIA Director Robert Gates acknowledges that the American intelligence services began to aid the anti-Soviet mujahideen guerillas not after the Russian invasion but six months before it…. President Carter's purpose was to provoke a full-scale Soviet military intervention……….. to tie…….down the USSR.” Will an expanded military effort in Afghanistan tie down the U.S. as it did the USSR?

Obama plans a U.S. military effort in Afghanistan lasting at least five years in a country 50% larger than Iraq in area and population. The NATO allied forces are token in size and commitment and rarely leave their base camps. A serious U.S. military effort will require at least 250,000 troops tied down in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Will America be unable to react to other challenges as they arise especially its obligations, to protect Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, to deter Iran from a nuclear program, to support Pakistan from collapse; etc..

The invasion of Iraq could be justified on imperial grounds because it is strategically situated in the heart of the largest concentration of oil in the world. Afghanistan has no comparable resource, one of the poorest countries, no industry, little farming, rugged terrain, a land of banditry and bribery.

The adventure fails from a non- imperial perspective. Obama says “That country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.” None of the 19 people who perpetrated the September 11 criminal tragedy were Afghan or Taliban. Fifteen of them were Saudi. There are no Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan any longer. Osama bin Laden and what is left of his crew is in hiding somewhere in the wilderness of Pakistan. The Al Qaeda operation is scattered and disorganized. Yes, another 19 thugs could infiltrate the U.S. and kill Americans, but sending an army into Afghanistan is not going to prevent another such criminal act. In fact, the hyped war in Afghanistan is more likely to divert us from protecting ourselves against another September 11.

A.I.G. Bonuses - The Last Straw

A.I.G. Bonuses - The Last Straw
By Jerome Grossman

The national explosion of anger over the bonuses awarded to financial officers at American International Group indicates that the tipping point has been reached in the accumulated resentments on American financial inequality.. For generations, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the income gap between the 95% of U.S. population lumped together as working class and middle class, and the 5% who earned $250,000 or more per year, has widened significantly. The 5% have more clout. They dominate U.S. politics, education, culture, taxation rules, charitable institutions, media, and business, acting as a kind of American nobility with benefits handed down from generation to generation.

Then comes a time when a relatively insignificant event captures the attention of the masses who begin to connect their anger at the current violation with the other half-remembered abuses. Then comes real change. Sometimes a popular leader emerges to dramatize the exploitation, like William Jennings Bryan, who galvanized the Democratic Party with “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” dramatizing the economic ills plaguing farmers and industrial workers. He won the Democratic nomination twice although not the presidency. But he won many of his reforms, backed by an aroused citizenry, were adopted, including the income tax, popular election of senators, woman suffrage, popular knowledge of newspaper ownership etc.

Today Americans are worried that the bailout was designed for the benefit of those who created the crisis. They suspect that America has been taken over by a small class of connected insiders who use money to control elections, buy influence, systematically weaken financial regulation and get government money to bail them out when they get into trouble.


The A.I.G. bonuses remind the 95% of:

• The bailouts of the banks and bankers from their own mistakes
• The failure to bail-out the average citizen from unfair mortgages and job layoffs
• The bankers who gambled with depositor money at enormous risk to build bonuses for themselves
• The low tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans on the top portion of their earnings now at 35%, once 91% under Eisenhower, 70% under Nixon, 50% under Reagan. What happened to the progressive tax based on ability to pay?

• The special tax rate for capital gains of 20% used by the wealthiest Americans

• The special tax breaks given to insiders as earmarks

• Some business executives maintain control by appointing their friends to boards of directors

• Some business executives vote themselves enormous salaries

• Some business executives vote themselves stock options, some of which are back-dated to take advantage of stock price increases

• Some business executives vote themselves enormous retirement packages not based on performance

• Some business executives discharge workers and speed up the rest of the work force to increase short term profits and stock prices

• Some business executives maintain headquarters outside the U.S.A. and shift corporate income from country to country to avoid taxes

Will the anger about A.I.G. bonuses subside? Or will an organization of citizens spring up to fight for their interests? Will another William Jennings Bryan denounce the current abuses and agitate for fairer wages and fairer division of the profits of our technological society? Will the current anger dissipate into the day-to-day problems of an economy in decline? Will the A.I.G. bonuses be the last straw?

Better to Bribe Than to Kill

Better to Bribe Than to Kill
By Jerome Grossman

There are four power centers in the Obama foreign-policy establishment, each led by heavyweights with close relationships to the president: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Adviser James Jones, and Vice President Joseph Biden. Gates and Jones have strong military backgrounds; Clinton and Biden come from political and civilian experience. Which one will have the president's ear?

Obama has a big decision to make on Afghanistan where U.S. forces have been fighting for almost eight years and where the president says we are not winning. About 35,000 US troops are in action there alongside the same number of soldiers from NATO allies. Obama has commissioned the development of a plan for Afghanistan due in April, but he is sending 17,000 more troops before the plan is ready, surely a sign that military matters are not going well in the allied effort.

Loquacious Biden has preempted the discussion. On March 10 he said that 70% of the Taliban are essentially mercenaries who possibly could be negotiated with instead of fought and said that the U.S.likely will try this approach." Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another twenty-five percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, of the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency........ And roughly 70% are involved because of the money, because of them being......paid.” Notice that Biden ignores Afghan nationalism and the universal resentment against foreign invasion, expressed repeatedly over the centuries, most recently by armed resistance against the Soviet Union and the British Empire.

Biden is suggesting a strategy based on U.S. experience with the Sunnis in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan immediately after the September 11 tragedy, it defeated the Taliban with air power and dollars, with few soldiers. U.S. forces learned that the opposing forces could be defeated with cash, or at least sent back to their villages with the help of bribed local warlords.

General David Petraeus repeated this teqnique in the Anbar province of Iraq, where he was able to buy the cooperation of the local sheiks and then put 100,000 Sunni insurgent warriors on the U.S. payroll where they remain to this day. That was and is the prime reason for the sudden decline in insurgency in Iraq. Petraeus also threw into the deal guns for the vacationing warriors, who decided to wait for the U.S. to leave before using those guns against their Shia rivals.

There doesn't seem to be a compelling reason for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere in Pakistan. The Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan have been destroyed. Poor, primitive Afghanistan is a nation of brigands with a corrupt central government to match. If we can end the war by purchase, so much the better. Better to bribe than to kill.

Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail
By Jerome Grossman

At least twenty oversized American banks have histories of reckless behavior, including bad lending and gambling with derivatives, that have left them insolvent, in fact, bankrupt. They have poisoned the economy and should pay the price for their mistakes just like every other business.

However, because their machinations affect so many investors, depositors and other businesses, they have been given a pass, saved by massive injection of federal government funds. By basic capitalist standards, this is a gross violation of business integrity, weakening the structure of our economic system. The violated principle is summarized as “Too big to fail.” One Nobel Prize winning economist called it “looting”.

The managers of such institutions knew how to take advantage of their special status. They took excessive risk for mountainous profits that would entitle them to massive bonuses if successful - or a government bailout if the investment failed. The techniques were often complicated; but some were based on inadequate reserves that purposely underestimated the financial exposure. The managers were in financial clover: heads I win, tails you lose, “Too big to fail.”

In the current crisis, the government is rescuing the managers once again, lending $700 billion as bailout money. That amount, leveraged on an accepted basis of ten to one, could have supported $7 trillion of lending capacity in a new or reorganized bank, more than enough to serve the nation's business. We didn’t go that route; they are “Too big to fail.” President Obama has given primary responsibility for the financial crisis to Lawrence Summers, head of the National Economic Council, and Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury. The president can do better than these two conventional figures stuck in the past.

There may be an uncomfortable analogy in the position of the United States in world affairs: “Too big to fail.” Decade after decade we overspend on military equipment, organize the largest military budget the world has ever seen, enter failed military quagmires in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, yet we get token troop support from nations around the world even though their populations disapprove of our military invasions. A remarkable 737 American military bases with hundreds of thousands of American troops are situated in 130 countries, a worldwide presence that protects the governing elites on virtually every continent. Is the U.S.A. “Too big to fail” because its collapse would upset the political and military status quo all over the world?

Where does the U.S. get the money to finance its domestic and foreign errors? In large part from China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the other countries that buy U.S. Treasury bonds in the hope that they will be redeemable despite our enormous national debt of $10,942,165,294,650.89 or roughly eleven (11) trillion dollars. China's economy depends on the sales of goods to the U.S. The Saudis have big investments in the U.S. and depend on U.S. military power to protect them from their own people and keep the oil flowing. The Japanese are inheriting our automobile business

In spite of their mistakes, the banks and the U.S. maintain their prime positions in the world because they are “Too big to fail.” How long can it last? Their gross errors of management are too expensive, depressing profits and living standards by forcing greatly increased costs on the entire world. Adam Smith, the patron saint of capitalism, would tell the nation and the world that these arrangements are too inefficient and unstable to be continued indefinitely.

U.S. Out of Iraq - NOW

U.S. Out of Iraq - NOW
By Jerome Grossman

Barack Obama captured the soul of the Democratic Party when he denounced the American invasion of Iraq as a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter, based on faulty and manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. His election to the presidency proved that the voters trusted him to end the war as he promised.

While Americans are grateful that this six year old war will soon be over, they wonder at the delay in pulling our troops from Iraq. More than 4000 Americans have been killed; more than 30,000 have been wounded in this war generally regarded as a mistake. Our military leaders say that we should leave "responsibly." What does that mean? Responsible to whom? To the Iraqis, whose public wants us to leave at once? To the corrupt Iraqi government whose leaders want us to stay as long as we supply the dollars?

Our first responsibility is to the men and women of the U. S. military. No more deaths. No more wounds. How would you like to be the last soldier to die for a mistake?

Obama promised a pullout within 16 months. Now, his senior officials tell the New York Times that will be extended to 19 months. How many Americans will be killed or wounded in those three months? Why? To protect the military equipment? Leave it there for the Iraqis. When we invaded, our operation against a shooting enemy took one month. Getting out should take the same one month.

If we are serious

President Obama plans to leave behind a "residual force" to continue training Iraqis, to hunt down foreign terrorist cells, to guard the American Embassy and other American installations. That doesn't sound like much of a withdrawal. The residual tasks are what we have been doing for six years. Right now, there are about 142,000 American military in Iraq and a like number of civilian contractors working for us. The duties of the residual force indicate that at least 100,000 Americans would remain in Iraq in addition to a sizeable number of contractors to help them. Not the pullout we expected. And if the fragile truce between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds disintegrates, U.S. forces are likely to stay in Iraq.

The U.S. now has more than 700 military bases in 130 countries. The Middle East contains 60% of the oil on earth. The U.S. has commercial, political, financial and cultural interests in every country in the area, some of the interests valued in the trillions of dollars. Will Iraq become the 131st country? Will the residual force become the U.S. military base? Removing all U.S. troops from Iraq – NOW – may reverse our reliance on military power, restore our international reputation and encourage the use of “soft power” in pursuit of American interests.

The Afghan Cemetery

The Afghan Cemetery
By Jerome Grossman

President Obama indicated through his press secretary that his administration would review its policy toward Afghanistan before making a decision about sending additional troops to fight in that country. Richard Holbrooke, his envoy, was in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region talking with leaders about how best to address the military and political situation. Obama also met with advisers at the Pentagon and the State Department.

As recently as February 15, it was reported that Obama “is refusing to be rushed into his first decision to send troops into combat…… questioning the time table, the mission and even the composition of the new forces.” However, Obama changed his mind on February 17, authorizing 17,000 additional soldiers and Marines for Afghanistan in what he described as an urgent bid to stabilize a deteriorating and neglected country, joining the 30,000 U.S. troops already there.

Obama will be sending more troops to Afghanistan before he has begun to fulfill a promised rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq. His order leaves crucial questions of strategy and tactics in Afghanistan unanswered until the strategy review is completed in April. Antiwar groups criticized Obama’s decision. Tom Andrews, director of Win Without War said, “The president is committing these troops before he's determined what the mission is….. We need to avoid the slippery slope of military escalation.”

The hasty decision ignored the many negative comments about the prospects for a U.S. victory. General David Petraeus has called Afghanistan “the graveyard of empires”. Holbrooke reported “a purely military victory is not achievable.” British historians furnish the details of their three failed military attempts to pacify the country. Twenty years after the troops of the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan in defeat, the last Russian general to command them said on Feb 13 that the Soviets’ devastating experience, losing more than 15,000 troops in Afghanistan battling guerrillas “is a dismal omen for the U.S.”

Supporters of expanded U.S. military operations in Afghanistan cite the successes of the American military against the Taliban in October and November, 2001, immediately after the tragedy of September 11. However, that victory was accomplished by air power and bribery. Airpower prevented Taliban military operations. Hundred dollar bills bought warlord allies in this corrupt country whose main product is opium.

Can we do it again, bribing our way through the drug lords? Perhaps. But history shows that Afghans don't stay bought and that the guerrillas motivated by rebellion and nationalism will fight the invaders for hundreds of years, making a bandit's living out of their tactics as they have done for time immemorial.

Don’t think that General Petraeus does not know how to use money as a weapon. While he was installing the “Surge” in Iraq adding 30,000 fresh troops with great fanfare, he was quietly bribing the insurgent Sunnis with $20 dollar bills and rifles, paying 100,000 warriors to stop fighting the Americans.

Obama on Civil Liberties

Obama on Civil Liberties
By Jerome Grossman

In January I was watching the Senate confirmation hearing of President Obama’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta. How did we ever keep informed before C-SPAN?

As a passionate civil libertarian, I was so proud of Panetta as he denounced torture without any reservations stating that the CIA would follow the rules of the U.S. Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. Then he said that the U.S. would no longer engage in rendition, the secret shuttling of detainees and prisoners to foreign nations who torture.

I was so happy that I had voted for Obama and had sent him a fat check. And Panetta became my hero, boldly changing the positions of the Bush administration and the secret activities of the CIA.

A couple of days later, quite by accident, I caught Panetta on C-SPAN again, before the same Senate committee, a surprise because the first hearing seemed to have covered all the questions. A senator asked Panetta a leading question on torture: “What would you do if you knew that a bomb, maybe nuclear, was about to be exploded and your prisoner knew when and where?” Panetta replied that he would ask for “additional authority”, that is, to torture in exceptional circumstances.

Panetta's position has moral and operational flaws. How can he be sure that the intelligence about a bomb is accurate? How does he know that the prisoner has the information sought and even if he does that he will tell the truth? If the exception is built into the system, won't it be used more and more to justify torture, to break down a prisoner by claiming the most extreme danger whether or not it is present?

Then another senator asked Panetta to expand his views on rendition. He replied,” I'm glad you asked”, and proceeded to modify his initial statements: The CIA might continue its “extraordinary rendition”, transferring prisoners to third countries even those known to torturer, relying on their assurances of humane treatment. Just what the Bush administration claimed for eight years while the contracting countries routinely tortured. The senator may have asked: Why send prisoners or detainees abroad at great expense for mere interrogation? Wouldn't that jeopardize later judicial prosecutions? How can the interrogators’ actions be controlled from another faraway continent? Is it a good idea to farm out aspects of our legal system?

The Obama administration has decided “not to change the status quo immediately” on these issues according to Gregory Craig, the White House Counsel. Civil libertarians ought to take notice and express their disappointment about these matters as well as the continuation of electronic eavesdropping of phone calls without a warrant.


It was clear that the White House was having second thoughts about the very important changes in civil liberties described as Obama policy by Panetta in his first appearance. That is unfortunate and unwise. In the election, the American people repudiated the way the Bush administration operated. There needs to be a dramatic change of direction, especially on civil liberties, and without hesitation. That is the prime reason why Barack Obama was elected president.

Ted Kennedy: His First Election

Ted Kennedy: His First Election

By Jerome Grossman
An interesting sidebar to Ted Kennedy's inspiring political history harks back to his first run for the Senate in 1962. It was, as some labeled it, a "battle of the clans": Opposing Kennedy in the Massachusetts Democratic Primary was Edward McCormack, nephew of House Speaker John McCormack; Kennedy's Republican opponent was Yankee scion George Cabot Lodge; and on the left was Independent peace candidate Harvard Prof. H. Stuart Hughes, chair of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and grandson of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.

I was Campaign Manager and Chester Hartman was the organizer of the massive signature drive required to place Hughes on the ballot. Hughes needed 72,000 signatures, a purposely prohibitive number in that era of McCarthyism and nobody in fact had tried to reach it since the law had first been passed.

In this talented field, Hughes polled 50,013 votes, 2.3% of the votes cast. However, we collected a startling 149,000 signatures in ten weeks for a "peace candidate." The Cuban Missile Crisis arrived in October just before the election. With the integrity that was his hallmark, Hughes went against the popular hysteria: he accused President Kennedy of acting over hastily in imposing the blockade of Cuba, of bypassing the United Nations, and unnecessarily stirring up an atmosphere of national emergency. His position cost Hughes thousands of votes.

In the process we built a town-by-town organization all over the state, a structure that remains in place today. A clear result has been the election over recent decades of so many progressive voices to the state's first-rate Congressional delegation, including Michael Harrington, Father Robert Drinan, Gerry Studds, Jim McGovern, Barney Frank, Ed Markey, John Tierney, Michael Capuano and John Kerry.
The Hughes campaign built the strongest statewide peace movement in the country, a movement that changed the face and reputation of Massachusetts politics.