Tuesday, August 9, 2016 The Wall Street Journal
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— Ahmed Al Omran in Riyadh contributed to this article. Write to Andrea Thomas at andrea.thomas@wsj.com Copyright 2016. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. #
Aug. 8, 2016 7:20 p.m. ET 11 COMMENTS Was the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States a crime or an act of war? In 2009, Rosa Brooks, a professor of law at Georgetown, was brought into Barack Obama’s Pentagon to ponder that question and others like it. Her conclusion about the 9/11 attack: Its legal status is “effectively indeterminate.” That is a lawyerly finding and not one that is especially useful to policy makers. But such maddening ambiguity is precisely the problem we now face, argues Ms. Brooks in “How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything.” Many of the categories with which we think about national security, she says, have become obsolete. In a world where our enemies do not belong to armies or wear uniforms—where a weapon can be a roadside bomb or a computer virus—confusion reigns. Do the laws of war apply, allowing for the liberal use of force? Or must we adhere to the laws of peacetime, which constrict the application of force within a web of legal procedures? “We don’t know,” Ms. Brooks writes, “if drone strikes are lawful wartime acts, or murders.” We don’t know “when it is acceptable for the U.S. government to lock someone up indefinitely, without charge or trial.” We don’t know “if mass government surveillance is reasonable or unjustifiable.” 
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Photo: wsj How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything By Rosa Brooks Simon & Schuster, 438 pages, $29.95 Thanks to the haziness of our present situation, Ms. Brooks concludes, we are losing “our collective ability to place meaningful restraints on power and violence.” Decisions taken first by George W. Bush and then by Barack Obama, she writes, “have allowed the rules and habits of wartime to pervade ordinary life.” She cites “the militarization of U.S. police forces,” evident in the proliferation of SWAT teams armed with equipment intended for war zones; the blanket of secrecy thrown over court proceedings; and intensified surveillance that can have “chilling effects” on the exercise of constitutional rights. Such domestic troubles are matched by what Ms. Brooks sees as a disastrous record abroad. Our invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought chaos, she says; our departure in 2011 brought more. In Afghanistan, “we caused untold suffering for the very population we so earnestly tried to help.” The more we try to fix things around the world, she laments, “the more we end up shattering them into jagged little pieces.” Despite such harsh criticisms of our post 9/11 record, Ms. Brooks’s book is not intended as a polemic. Her aim, she says, is to help America become a force for good in the world, and to that end she proposes reforms. Unfortunately, they are often vague or utopian. She urges us to “develop new rules and institutions to manage the paradoxes of perpetual war.” Her most specific proposal is to embrace more “transparency” and “better mechanisms to prevent arbitrariness, mistakes and abuse” in conducting drone warfare. To avoid setting precedents that hostile states might follow, she suggests that the U.S. accept a “further loss of sovereignty” and establish “robust” international governance, “a strong global referee committed both to stability and human dignity.” Yielding sovereignty to international governance is the longtime dream of American progressivism. One would think that the sorry history of the United Nations—a cesspool of corruption and anti-democratic ideology—would be enough by now to show the impossibility of finding an evenhanded “global referee” that can protect “human dignity.” Interspersed with such analysis are, as the subtitle has it, “tales from the Pentagon”: vivid depictions of bureaucratic maneuvering. We encounter Samantha Power, for example, serving on the National Security Council, trying to advance a change in policy at Guantanamo: “Before the election, this guy [Obama] was my friend,” we hear Ms. Power complain, “but right now I can’t even get ten minutes with him without going through six layers of self-important jerks.” Advertisement As Ms. Brooks was to discover in her capacity as a legal adviser to the defense secretary, it was just such self-important jerks who often held the critical levers of policy. In one episode, a White House aide—unnamed but described as “smart” and “energetic”—called her and demanded that Central Command position a “surveillance platform” over Kyrgyzstan to monitor a human-rights crisis in its capital. Ms. Brooks replied that the request would have to go through the chain of command, a response that left him “incredulous.” The conversation concluded with him embittered, “convinced that ‘the military’ was refusing to take atrocity prevention issues seriously.” Ms. Brooks’s uniformed colleagues at the Pentagon, for their part, were taken aback that a senior White House official did not grasp the elementary fact that “sensitive, expensive military assets couldn’t instantly be moved from a war zone to foreign airspace via a simple phone call from a midlevel staffer.” Such moments of insight aside, Ms. Brooks’s general analysis is often tendentious. Without evidence or argument, for example, she dismisses the accomplishments of the hard-fought “surge” of 2007, when stability had been restored to Iraq and there was some hope for democratic equilibrium. She says that we pulled out of Iraq four years later with our “tails between our legs,” leaving behind “a level of civil violence that remains astronomically high.” In truth, it was Mr. Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq that set in motion the chaos that we now see there. (At the time, Vice President Biden crowed about Iraq’s stability, calling it one of the administration’s “great achievements.”) On the home front, Ms. Brooks never comes close to demonstrating that “everything became war and the military became everything”: She sweeps up widely different policies in a simplistic thesis and overbroad assertions. If we are ever to make progress in sorting out the genuine ambiguities of our current moment, we’re going to need a sharper analysis than is provided here.
Copyright 2016. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. #
Updated Aug. 8, 2016 5:55 p.m. ET 7 COMMENTS RIO DE JANEIRO—Security screeners posted outside some Olympics venues have taken to waving spectators through checkpoints without X-raying their bags in order to help reduce long lines, the latest breakdown in a process that has raised fears about lax security at the Rio Games. Olympics security officials have at times been halting the use of X-ray scanners and instead inspecting bags by hand to help shorten wait times, an organizing committee spokesman said Monday. He said security personnel were also performing “random” checks, an acknowledgment that at times not all bags are being screened in an effort to speed the lines. At several Olympics locales over the weekend, including the beach-volleyball stadium in Copacabana and the equestrian venue in Deodoro sports complex on the city’s north side, screeners opted for visual inspections of bags in lieu of machine screening of backpacks and purses. In some cases, screeners didn’t review bags at all, although ticket holders were required to walk through metal detectors.
Lilly King of the U.S. set an Olympic record in winning the 100-meter breaststroke Monday night in Rio, beating Russian Yulia Efimova by more than half a second. Click to Read Story Michael Phelps’s Golden Chance to Rebuild His Brand By returning to the Olympics, the most decorated athlete in Games history can bolster his corporate persona and reestablish sponsorships lost Click to Read Story Advertisement U.S. Male Gymnasts Want to Be Objectified Rio 2016: Even when they medal they stand in the shadow of female gymnasts. Might the answer be to disrobe? Click to Read Story In Indian Olympic Hopeful’s Hometown, Judo Throws Are a Career Move At the high-school gym in a small Punjab town where Avtar Singh trained in judo, young boys are hoping to follow him, if not to the Olympics, at least into a good job. Click to Read Story The Vault That Is Too Wild for Simone Biles The high-risk, high-reward Produnova vault is a gamble that only a handful of women’s gymnasts are willing to make—and none of them are Americans. Click to Read Story Advertisement Rio Olympics 2016 Mario Andrada, a spokesman for the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee, said the occasional lack of X-ray screening was deliberate, describing it as a move meant to reduce congestion. Security lines to enter some Olympic venues have been so long that some fans have given up, leaving swaths of empty seats at many events. “Sometimes we go to manual screening when we see the lines forming…but it’s never like, open the doors, open the gates,” Mr. Andrada said. “We do manual screening and we do random screening and we have very experienced people.” Mr. Andrada said such moves don’t compromise security. But Benjamin Yelin, a senior law and policy analyst at the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security, said shelving X-ray screening at a mega event is a “radical” move that should only be attempted by veteran screeners capable of quickly assessing which people pose the highest risks. “It’s a significant step to sacrifice X-ray screening,” Mr. Yelin said. “You can be incredibly skilled and still not be able to do the level of security that’s achieved when every single person is subject to an X-ray.” As the Games officially opened Friday, Brazil’s government was still scrambling to patch together a team of weapons screeners to pat down spectators and search for weapons and other contraband outside Olympics venues. The government was forced to call up retired police officers with little experience operating X-ray machines to replace a similarly inexperienced private contractor that had failed to hire enough staff after Brazil waited until July 1 to award the contract. On the eve of the opening ceremonies, the retired police officers were still being trained in the use of metal detectors and other equipment, according to Brazil’s Ministry of Justice, which is in charge of venue security. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the latest screening issues. Brazil has been on high alert following recent terror attacks in Europe, Turkey and the U.S. The federal government has deployed about 85,000 police and soldiers during the Games. Brazilian officials have repeatedly assured visitors and competitors that they will be safe while in Rio, and that security measures for the Games are adequate. Heavily-armed soldiers and police are stationed throughout the city. In July, Brazilian authorities arrested at least a dozen suspected Islamic State sympathizers, who police said had been planning attacks during the Olympic Games. But the screening lapses, plus a spate of recent muggings in Rio, have cast doubt on the effectiveness of Brazil’s massive show of force. Over the weekend Portugal’s Minister of Education was robbed at knife point near the rowing venue, and a Chinese athlete was robbed of his luggage last month by a thief pretending to be drunk. Brett Costello, a photographer for News Corp Australia, lost around $40,000 of camera equipment Thursday after a team of thieves snatched his bag at a coffee shop in Ipanema. One of the alleged thieves was captured two days later when Mr. Costello spotted him walking inside the Olympic Park. The suspect, who was wearing Mr. Costello’s Olympic-issued photographer’s vest, had apparently slipped through security without the official press credentials required of all journalists seeking to enter the facility. News Corp owns The Wall Street Journal. Journalists have observed a number of security lapses at Olympic venues. At the media center near Rio’s main Olympic Park on Sunday, a Journal reporter was waiting for his bag to be checked at the entrance when security workers walked away, leaving the journalist free to enter the facility with no challenge or inspection. Two others wandered out of the perimeter of the Olympic Park on Saturday and got back in through an unguarded gap in a security fence. Mr. Andrada, however, cast the security-screening operation as a success because it has significantly reduced wait times outside the venues. “Yesterday the main goal was, let’s get rid of the lines without compromising security,” Mr. Andrada said Monday of the previous day’s events. “We did that.” Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com, Will Connors atwilliam.connors@wsj.com and Paul Kiernan at paul.kiernan@wsj.com Copyright 2016. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. #
MAKHMOUR, Iraq — Two years ago, the U.S.-led coalition launched the first airstrikes on the Islamic State group, ushering in a deeper phase of intervention that dramatically changed the fight against the militant group in Iraq. Since then, more than 9,400 coalition airstrikes have allowed Iraqi forces to slowly claw back cities, towns, supply lines and infrastructure. But the fight — which continues to be largely waged from the air — has also leveled entire neighborhoods, displaced millions and redrawn the Iraqi map. The U.S.-led coalition estimates that since the airstrikes began on Aug 8, 2014, IS has lost more than 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq. But while coalition airstrikes paved the way for Kurdish and Iraqi ground forces to retake territory, in many cases the result is a ruined prize. The first coalition strikes were spurred by an IS push from Mosul a few weeks after the group's initial rampage across Iraq. Makhmour base was just one of a number of front-line positions overrun in early August 2014, bringing IS fighters within just 30 kilometers (19 miles) of Irbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region. "Daesh was moving into this town and we were withdrawing up into the mountains," said Ayoub Khaylani, a Peshmerga solider who was at Makhmour base with his unit just before the initial IS attack on Mahkmour. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for IS. After three days of airstrikes, the IS advance on Irbil was slowed and Kurdish forces retook the base. Two years later, the fight against IS has moved west across the Tigris River into Nineveh province and Makhmour has transitioned from an active front line to a sleepy support position. "If it weren't for the strikes and the heavy artillery (given to the Iraqi army by the coalition), we would still be up in the mountains," Khaylani said, sitting in a small air conditioned room hunched over his mobile phone on an overstuffed sofa. "I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq," said President Barack Obama when he announced the authorization for airstrikes in Iraq in 2014. "American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq." On Friday, the Pentagon announced about 400 U.S. soldiers will deploy south of Mosul to Qayarah airbase to aid in the operation to retake Iraq's second-largest city. They are among the 560 additional troops that President Obama approved for the Iraq mission last month. The Pentagon says there are about 3,800 U.S. forces currently in Iraq, not including hundreds who are on temporary duty and not included in the official count. As the push to retake Mosul ramps up, the scars from two years of costly victories remain vivid. Sinjar, the small mostly Yazidi town north of Mosul, was retaken by Kurdish forces nine months ago, but it still lies in ruins. While Sinjar is technically "liberated" the vast majority of its residents still live in tented camps for the displaced scattered throughout Iraq's north. The Pentagon claims 55 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Syria since the air war against IS was launched. However, human rights and humanitarian aid groups insist that number is vastly underestimated. Airwars, a project tracking airstrikes targeting IS, estimates that at least 1,568 civilians have likely died in coalition actions. For Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga forces, pushing back IS has also meant strengthening their hold on disputed territory. Closely supported with coalition training, intelligence sharing and airstrikes, Kurdish forces have taken hundreds of towns and villages from IS that were previously claimed by both the Kurdish regional government and Iraq's central government in Baghdad. Amnesty International accused peshmerga forces of deliberately destroying thousands of homes in Arab villages taken back from IS in an effort to prevent Arab residents from returning to the territory, according to a report earlier this year. Mosul residents who fled to Irbil in the summer of 2014 celebrated the first coalition airstrikes on extremist militants, hoping the stepped-up intervention would quickly repel the militants and allow civilians to return home. Now, makeshift tents in church gardens and half-finished buildings have been replaced with neat rows of caravans on the outskirts of town that resemble fledgling neighborhoods more than temporary shelters. Across Iraq, more than 3.2 million Iraqis remain displaced from their homes, according to information gathered by the International Organization for Migration. Kindi Hameed Majid, 30, fled Mosul with his wife in the summer of 2014. The young couple thought they would only be gone a few days. Now more than two years later, he is still in Irbil and says he doubts he will ever return. Even if Mosul is retaken by Iraqi forces, he said he worries the city will never be secure enough to be inhabitable again. "We see the future as dark and unknown." Associated Press writers Balint Szlanko and Salar Salim contributed to this report. Copyright 2016. The New York Times Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. #
MSF Says a Hospital It Supports in Syria Bombed, 13 Killed By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AUG. 8, 2016, 1:55 P.M. E.D.T. The New York Times. Online Edition. BEIRUT — A hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders and specializing in pediatrics in a rebel-held northern Syria province has been destroyed in a series of airstrikes over the weekend that killed 13 people, including four staff and five children, the international medical charity said Monday. The group, known by its French acronym MSF, said that two of four airstrikes directly hit the hospital in Millis, in the northern province of Idlib and put it out of service. Six other hospital staff members were wounded in the broad daylight airstrikes Saturday. The bombing of the hospital that serves as a reference center specializing in pediatrics also destroyed the operating theatre, intensive care unit, pediatric department, ambulances and a generator, the charity said. It was not clear which government had conducted the airstrikes and the MSF statement did not specify. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. has not conducted any airstrikes near Idlib. MSF said the hospital attack deprives 70,000 people in Millis and surrounding areas of essential medical care. The hospital, supported by MSF since 2014, used to receive 250 patients per day, many of them women and children "The direct bombing of another hospital in Syria is an outrage," says Silvia Dallatomasina, medical manager of MSF operations in northwestern Syria. She called for an immediate end to attacks on hospitals, pointing that four out of five UN Security Council members are participants in the war in Syria. Hospitals, mostly in rebel-held areas, are regularly attacked. In July alone, the U.N. said it has recorded 44 attacks on health facilities in Syria. Syria's government and Russia, a major ally that has been carrying out airstrikes in Syria since September, deny targeting health facilities. In recent days, a number of attacks were reported on medical facilities amid increased violence, and ultimately increased pressure on the health facilities, in northern Syria. MSF said two facilities it supports in Idlib, controlled by insurgents, have reported nine mass-influxes of wounded in July, that left 466 wounded and 37 dead. In the first six-months of 2016, the same facilities reported only seven mass-influxes of wounded, with a total 294 wounded and 33 dead. Copyright 2016. The New York Times Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. #
CAIRO — The Saudi-led military coalition resumed its bombing campaign overYemen’s capital, Sana, early Tuesday, and there were immediate reports of civilian deaths. Medical officials in Sana said the dead included nine employees of a potato chip factory, according to local news reports. The international airport in Sana was closed by the airstrikes for 72 hours starting Monday evening, Reuters reported. Other news accounts on Tuesday reported a death toll of 14. It was the first time in five months that Sana had been bombed by warplanes from the coalition, which also includes Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and other Middle Eastern countries. It came after peace talks collapsed on Saturday between the Houthi militias that dominate the capital and the largely exiled government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by the coalition and Western powers. Numerous violations of the cease-fire agreement, including airstrikes in some areas, had been reported on both sides. But while peace talks were underway, the capital has largely been spared the sort of heavy bombing that characterized the early stages of the Saudi-led intervention, which began in 2015. The coalition launched airstrikes in the Nehm district, northeast of Sana, on Sunday, and there were reports that 18 civilians had been killed there. Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, could not be reached for comment on Monday or Tuesday. On Monday, a spokesman for the Yemeni military, Samer al-Haj, speaking by telephone from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, said that coalition and Yemeni government forces had begun an offensive to oust the Houthis from Sana, adding that only military action would persuade the Houthis to come to terms. The Houthi militias, who the Saudis believe are supported by Iran, control most of Yemen, including its most populated areas. Mr. Hadi’s allies control the southern port city of Aden and some other areas in the south. The Houthi-controlled news agency Saba reported that Saudi warplanes had struck 18 targets throughout Sana Province since Monday. It also said that Houthi forces had retaliated with artillery and missile strikes on the Saudi provinces of Jazan and Aseer, along Yemen’s northern border. The war in Yemen has gone on for 15 months, claiming more than 6,500 lives and provoking a humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of severely malnourished children and more than half of the population no longer able to feed itself adequately. It was already the poorest country in the Arab world before the war. Follow Rod Nordland on Twitter @rodnordland. Saeed Al-Batati contributed reporting from Al Mukalla, Yemen. Copyright 2016. The New York Times Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Download 95.38 Kb. Share with your friends:
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