What's Next for the Anti-War Movement? The War and Empire Landscape in Obama's 2nd Year

In assessing how our position has changed one year into the Barack Obama administration, the anti-war movement must avoid twin errors: that of relaxing our vigilance and opposition to the continuing permanent war, and that of denying the de-escalations in the global and domestic situation that have in fact taken place. The prior error will defeat the very purpose of our movements, while the latter will relegate us to further marginalization. Only a distanced consideration of exactly what has changed since the Bush years can provide an accurate assessment of the empire’s new posture -- and the correct way to respond to it.

Orwellian Nobel Peace Prize

Obama’s election was a repudiation of the “neocons” -- and their hubristic program of endless “regime change” throughout the Middle East (and eventually the rest of the world) -- by both the US electorate and political elite.

Citing a more “hopeful state of world affairs” brought about in part by the new administration in Washington, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January announced that it was moving the minute hand of its famous Doomsday Clock one minute back -- to six minutes of midnight. The decision echoes the findings of the Nobel Peace Prize committee that Obama has significantly ratcheted down global tensions.

Yet Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech was an open defense of the two wars that he is waging -- the one in Iraq winding down but still involving some 130,000 US troops (and many more private contractors); the one in Afghanistan rapidly escalating, with the 100,000 US troops there slated to rise this year to higher than Iraq levels (in addition to private contractors and a 30,000-strong international force).

According to a Jan. 13 Associated Press report, Obama will ask Congress for an additional $33 billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars -- on top of what promises to be a record-breaking $708 billion for the Pentagon next year. It is a grim comment on our times that a president elected on an anti-war platform, and still perceived as a peace-maker, will be the first to boost the Defense Department budget over $700 billion.

Obama’s Pentagon is now viewing Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single “Af-Pak” theater. Obama has actually escalated US drone strikes against presumed al-Qaeda targets in Pakistani territory -- over the open objections of the Islamabad government, Washington’s supposed ally. The drone strikes -- now coming every few days -- reportedly killed some 700 in 2009, overwhelmingly noncombatants. This counter-productive strategy only fuels the Taliban insurgency that now threatens to destabilize Pakistan entirely.

Dismantling the Torture Regime -- Maybe

Obama has not met his deadline, announced in an executive order last January, to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay within a year, and officials admit the camp may remain open until 2011 to allow an Illinois prison time to prepare for the arrival of the detainees. Even at the Thomson Correctional Center, the detainees will still remain under Pentagon administrative control, not that of the civilian authorities.

Of the 775 detainees that have passed through Guantánamo since it was opened in the aftermath of 9-11, less than 200 remain -- but their fate is uncertain. The Obama administration has decided to try some in the civilian courts -- the five charged in the 9-11 conspiracy -- but has gone ahead with military tribunals for others. The tribunals are ostensibly proceeding with greater standards for due process, following a reform of the Military Commissions Act. Of course, the right adamantly opposes any transfer of the Guantánamo detainees to US soil.

The administration has also taken measures to dismantle the secret network of clandestine prisons launched by the Pentagon and CIA under the Bush administration, which held many thousands around the world. The most significant hub in this global gulag, the prison at Afghanistan’s Bagram air base, has been moved off the base in preparation for its transfer to Afghan authorities. This will not necessarily mean an improvement in the human rights situation faced by the detainees there, but hopefully it will at least become a traditional prison rather than an extra-legal one. Obama has continued the Bush policy of denying any recognition of the habeas corpus rights of detainees held by the US overseas.

The passing of Obama’s deadline for the closure of Guantánamo means that now there is no longer any firm timeline for shutting the prison camp. And disturbingly, the Obama administration is calling for dismissal of the pending suit against Bush administration attorney John Yoo, author of the notorious “torture memos” that authorized human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

Slowing the Trajectory Towards a Police State -- Tentatively

On the domestic front, Obama has called a halt to the Bush administration’s aggressive and brutal coast-to-coast raids on factories, workplaces and neighborhoods by the Homeland Security Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Instead, ICE is sending employers written notice that they may face civil fines if they are found to be using unauthorized workers. Obama’s Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona's Maricopa County, who has run a local anti-immigrant police state complete with detainment camps, and ICE has revoked his authority to enforce federal immigration law. (Arpaio has vowed to defy the federal order, but so far hasn’t.)