The case for handling terrorists outside the civil legal system has now received support from an unlikely quarter: Judge Lewis Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan. Judge Kaplan presided over the trial of Ahmed Ghailani, who was just acquitted in 284 out of 285 counts relating to the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The verdict is largely the result of the prosecution’s decision not to introduce Ghailani’s own confession, obtained while he was being held at Guantanamo, and of the judge’s decision not to admit the evidence of a witness who said he had sold Ghailani the explosives used to blow up the embassy in Tanzania. In a fascinating tidbit, the New York Times notes:
The judge himself recognized the significance of excluding the witness when he said in his ruling that Mr. Ghailani’s status of “enemy combatant” probably would permit his detention as something akin “to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end, even if he were found not guilty.”
In other words, the judge fully expected that Ghailani would not be released regardless of the outcome in his court. Thankfully, that seems a good bet. For all President Obama’s miscalculation in sending Ghailani to a normal criminal court, he also remains committed to holding some detainees indefinitely simply because of the risk they would pose — a risk that has been amply documented by the number of Gitmo detainees released by the Bush administration who have gone back to terrorism. Ironically, Obama’s decision to employ criminal courts was designed to improve America’s image in the world, but our image will actually suffer more from holding indefinitely a suspect who has been largely acquitted by a jury than it would if there were no jury trial to begin with.
Gordon: Is anyone you know in the Bush Adminstration listening? I assume you are telling people other than just those who read this blog.
Gordon,
This news of problems in the American-Japanese relationship is very disheartening, even devastating. With the likely election of Barack Obama tomorrow, can we expect anything other than further erosion of alliances with the advent of a wooly-headed “every nation is an equal partner in the community of nations” type foreign policy? This likely eventuality is one of the most frightening aspects of an Obama Presidency. It has seemed that Bush has been teetering on the edge of the complete surrender of his democratic, freedom-promoting, humanitarian principles (Iraq excepted) over the last couple of years. With the swearing in of Barack Obama, we won’t just slip over the edge, we’ll dive head first.
Los Angeleno, thanks for asking. In fact, I have no contacts in the Bush administration.
Graham, I share your concern about what might happen in the next administration. I get by from one day to the next with the belief that the Chinese political system will fail as the country’s economy goes into reverse. Only then–when they are no longer mesmerized by Beijing–will Washington types get in touch with their better instincts and do the right thing by our allies in Asia.
Without wishing ill on the Chinese people, I’d say that can’t happen soon enough.
Dr. Chang: the ruling class in Japan thought that, with the reversion of Okinawa, the U.S. umbrella was safely grounded, and they would not have to do anything ever again to assure their state’s security. The Nixon shock was traumatic, and ever since then, this sort of trick that Aso so clumsily is trying to pull has been dragged out of the closet every few years, just as any neurotically dependent child tries to get mommy’s reassurance that everything will be all right. In this case, of course, it is a desperate attempt to try to draw the attention of The One’s 300 Foreign Policy Advisors (Ahh! Our own Thermopylae!) to the fact that Japan matters too. The sainted Bill Clark, who was on the U.S. negotiating team for Okinawa reversion (which some Japanese right-wingers, by the way, tried to portray as an abandonment of U.S. security guarantees to Japan); and the sainted Bill Clark, asst. sec. of state for East Asian affairs and later U.S. ambassador to India, had lovely descriptions of the attitude and the implementing tantrum: “What have you done for me tomorrow?” and “kabuki.”
What was it, 15-20 years ago when a popular nonfiction bestseller in Japan was titled The Japan that can Say No? The book’s thesis was that Japan needed to be more independent of the US, and pursue more of its own course in Asia.
Since then there have been numerous Japanese state visits around Asia cultivating a Japanese foreign policy, and of course the series of controversial ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the war dead from WWII — including soldiers who committed atrocities against Chinese, Koreans, Americans, and more — are commemorated. Every one of those visits has provoked editorials in the capitals of Japan’s former enemies, sounding the alarm that Tokyo is going off the reservation.
I don’t make light at all of Gordon’s concerns, because I share them. I do think it’s useful to put them in context. Sentiment for less conformity to America’s lead has waxed and waned in Japan over the last 30-some years (basically since we handed Okinawa back in 1971, and truly cut the last tie of post-war occupation). The rumbles today are far less tectonic than that remarkable year, 1971, when Nixon shifted our basic stance by inaugurating the overtures to Beijing (we all called it Peking then), relinquishing Okinawa to Japan, assuming the strategic offensive in Vietnam, and concluding a defense alliance with Thailand.
What I think we can agree Japan is not seeing from us today is coherent purpose in Asia. Our pattern is one of letting regional ties languish in strategic inattention, making tacit concessions to China, and engaging in a series of disembodied and abstract efforts, like the surreal Six Party process with North Korea — surreal first to last, including the latest developments with North Korea’s nuclear program, and America’s removal of Pyongyang from the terrorism sponsorship list.
What is abstract for us is very concrete for Japan, unquestionably the linchpin of our security and policy for the Far East. I wish I saw someone on the horizon, in either potential US administration that could take office in January, who has an overall strategic perspective on this bustling region. But I don’t.
Isn’t Japan as we know it disappearing? It will be populated by centenarians and their robot attendants before the century is out.
Graham, when that happens, it will be good for the Chinese people.
“The Japan that Can Say No” is the 1998 transcription of a staged jerk-off conversation between penny-novelist Shintaro Ishihara and Akio Morita of Sony (renowned in Japan for his subtle understanding of gross Yankee mentality). It was infantile venting, only more extreme and more concentrated than comparable ventings that recur regularly. Of course U.S. policy in East Asia and the Pacific should be more focused and more intelligent (What? With Chris Hill as asst. secretary for East Asia????), but this is not a crisis, it is not novel, it is not decisive. And of course, The One’s administration (Heaven forfend) will be even more helpless and clueless in this regard than the current one.
J.E. Dyer, as you state, there have been shocks in the relationship between Tokyo and Washington and the alliance has survived them. Yet it seems that the alliance has also weakened, especially now that neither of the two countries is bound by the constraints of the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. So I am worried.
Alexander Almasov, you are right that Aso is playing a “sort of trick,” but sometimes these tricks get out of hand. And Beijing will do its best to make sure it does, don’t you think?
*11 Gordon & JED,
The “Japanese Carry Trade” really screwed up our economic systems while it put a Trillion dollars or more in the Japanese coffers. Is that friendship?
RCAR, what do you mean? The carry trade involved investors from virtually everywhere taking advantage of low Japanese interest rates. This was not an initiative of the government of Japan. Or am I misunderstanding this?
Thanks in advance for the clarification.
*14
The proponderance of the money lent out at near zero & interest originated from Japan in order to shore up Japan’s export market which is the strongest in the world. This nearly unlimited “free” money destabilised the world’s economic systems.
*14/Gordon, here’s some red meat to chew on,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&sid=a0gK4Vt__cBU&refer=columnist_pesek
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currencycarrytrade.asp
RCAR, I see. Thanks for the explanation and the links.
Alexander Almasov — 1989 was the year of the “Japan That Can Say No” essay, which was an essay, not a book, as I erroneously suggested. It made something of a splash, which is why I cited it as a previous example of Japanese portfolio-rattling. I think we’re in agreement that current editorializing by Japan is of a kind seen before. I do agree with Gordon, though, that American policy under at least the last three presidents has ranged from sclerotic to feckless on many Far Eastern issues, and that there are growing reasons for Japanese discontent to center less on the constriction of our presence, and more on the insecurity of our effective absence.
As you say, Obama is about the very last man in America to do better in this regard.
The only way to maintain a mutually enthusiastic alliance in a post cold war era is to create a new common enemy that is why the Blue Team worked tirelessly in the past two decades trying to present China threat as a replacement of USSR to Japan but with mixed success. China has now replaced United States as the largest trading partner of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan; all three nations enjoy trade surplus with China. The growth of East Asian economies particularly Korea and Taiwan are heavily rely on healthy growth of export to China as they regard Chinese market their second domestic market. Japan needs the security alliance because China/Japan mutual distrust will not go away but this alliance relationship will continue to be high maintenance regardless who is the next President, rather it is inevitably diluted by the force of economic interdependence among East Asian nations.
Proponents of the Yellow Threat paranoid thesis such as Mr Chang are obsessed with seeing what is nowhere to be seen. China has given all the signals that they are only interested in increasing their commercial ties with other nations, and never to exert political influence on them, and much less to impose anything by force on others (except on Taiwan, of course).
If Mr Aso declared that it’s difficult to name other countries more important to them than China is because they have understood that the trading ties with their giant neighbor far outweigh strategical defense alliances against uncertain dangers.
Of course China plays to its own advantage, but who doesn’t? Compared with recent gambits of the US administration, China appears as a much more responsible member of the International Community. If there is a lesson for the US to learn here is not that they should make more aggressive their foreign relations agenda and frontally confront their competitors (note, competitors, not enemies), but that they, like China, should seek to tighten their ties with their allies by economic means, and once and for all quit that outdated Cold War mentality of “with me or against me”, no longer valid in the current multipolar world. Given the latest change of direction of the Bush administration, it seems they have already learnt the lesson, much to the dismay of the old neocon guard.
Of course, Froy totally dismisses the internal atrocities of China. Does it matter if they treat their own people as enemies rather than competitors? Mr. Chang is rightly concerned about the rise of China because China is an autocracy, and autocracies historically are interested in expanding their power. If you don’t see China exerting it’s political (political, not commercial) influence, you aren’t looking hard enough.
*”its political”*
Well, Graham, if you compare China’s interaction with other countries and their ever-respected principle of non-interference in other nation’s internal affairs with the US recent adventures toppling governments, financing opposition movements and encouraging coups d’etat, what can I say? It’s funny how the countries who best treat their own citizens turn out to be the most authoritarian on international scale, and viceversa.
I would correct you and say that growing powers historically tend to expand their power, be they democratic or autocratic. Western colonial powers being the best example. American Imperialism is another good example, and their interest in expanding their power is undeniable. China, on the other hand, during its long history has tended to wage wars against neighbors to maintain stable borders, rather than to obtain control of natural resources as Europeans tended to do. To apply the same premises on China as in the Western powers is to ignore its history.
Today China maintains frontiers with 14 different states, among them countries in deep crisis such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea or Myanmar. In Taiwan they have the legacy of an unfinished civil war, complicated by the cold war. Towards all these realities, China emits pacifying and prudent signals rather than aggressive. China is far from being perfect or “better than…”. Their internal reality contains horrendous injustices and oppressions, but in the foreign affairs domain it doesn’t appear aggressive. You can’t either deduce this from their history, doctrine nor military policies, beyond the fantasies of neocons warmongers, always in need of threats and enemies to justify their dangerous delusions. The Chinese nuke arsenal, the smallest of the 5 original nuclear powers, is today in the same stage as in the 80′s and it has never been on alert status. China doesn’t have the imperial military instruments par excellence: air carriers for long distance interventions, and they don’t plan to get them. That is the reality on the table, beyond the self-interested horror stories, and facing the global integration that we are living, that reality has an extraordinary importance.
Gordon,
What happened to your previous post on China? I get a “404 error” when I try to go to it.
Froy, you’re ignoring extremely aggressive conduct, such as the lasering of American satellites in 2006 and the daily cyber attacks on the United States and its allies. Then there is a continuing series of hostile acts that do not rise to the level of acts of war and a course of grossly irresponsible conduct, such as proliferating nuclear weapons technology. Ignore these acts if you want to, but you can’t say they are “nowhere to be seen.”
Sully, one of my old posts on China was put up in error on Sunday and was taken down as a result.
Froy, regarding comment #23, China maintains claims on the continental shelves of six other countries. That’s not aggressive? Its submarines violate the territorial waters of Japan on a continual basis. Is that the sign of a responsible power?
And by the way, China is planning to build aircraft carriers and is doing more than the other four recognized nuclear powers to expand and upgrade its nuclear arsenal.
As Rumsfeld would say, you are entitled to your opinions but not your own facts.
This Froy being appears to be another “realist.”
Gordon, it’s funny that you mention that China “is doing more than the other four recognized nuclear powers to expand and upgrade its nuclear arsenal”, when the US has come up with their Reliable Replacement Warhead, which IS the greatest attempt from any of the 5 nuclear powers to upgrade their arsenal, and is in direct breach of the NPT. I wonder where did you get those facts about China. It must be the same source as with the aircraft carrier: rumor and speculation. China doesn’t have the will nor the technology to develop large carriers like the American ones, and would need over a decade to make a small one.
About the Spratly Islands issue, China just signed last month an agreement with Vietnam to solve that conflict. So much for your “aggressive territorial claim” argument.
If the best you have are some cyber attacks, I think I’ll keep China below the US in the list of aggressive nations.
Rumsfeld was sacked for good reasons, the punk.
Everything has its season and I know the neocon’s is over. The US had the sympathy of nearly the whole world after 9/11 attack, amazingly neocons managed to bankrupt the entire friendship capital in just a few years to get fewer friends and more enemies. The second Iraq war will go down in history as a modern time neocons Crusade with no merit in national security whatsoever, one million life of mostly Iraqi civilians are wasted for nothing, American soldiers suffered relatively low death count but the hundreds returned amputated soldiers will be the reminding and walking accusations of neocons war crime for the next 60 years. Neocons will not die but will fade out of the front stage, evolve, mutate to another form before reemerge in the next political cycle, hopefully not too soon.
Gordon – “China is planning to build aircraft carriers”
Someone like JE Dyer will have a more informed view of this but I suspect big deck aircraft carriers are a dead end for China given how long it will take them to train up pilots and test up systems so as to become capable at any more than a basic level. All that means building a carrier or two now is really a step toward a real capability ten or twenty years down the line. Looking twenty years forward I have a feeling that ever smarter unmanned weapons will make such large ships unnecessary and vulnerable.
We already have the enormous investment in the technology and the platforms, and our ability to concentrate several carriers provides a big advantage over an emerging power (this was the situation that pertained when the Soviet Union started building a blue ocean navy with a couple of carriers, it was also the situation when Germany started building surface platforms to challenge the dominant English fleet in the late 30′s). I would be surprised if we build more big carrier – too much striking power concentrated in one platform with technology making it more and more possible to disperse that power. Add to that the fact that without subsurface dominance such ships are doubly vulnerable to opposing quiet submarines.
It would not be unreasonable to cede the Asian side of the Pacific to Chinese hegemony. The Japanese can then make the choice between getting nuclear weapons or submitting to China. Any US duty to Asians has long been paid in full.
Gordon, in your post #27 you wrote:
“China maintains claims on the continental shelves of six other countries. That’s not aggressive?”
The 6 other countries all have claims that overlapping each other, so it’s not like they only have dispute with China, everybody is disputing with everybody else, Why you single out China as the aggressor? If you check the history of using force in the disputed area, I suspect China is the one that shows more restraint.
If you use territorial dispute with other nations as the only criteria for aggression, you’ll have a long list of aggressive nations. Our NATO Allies Turkey and Greece have conflict over Cyprus, are they all agressoers or you want to pick one?
In #27 You also wrote: “And by the way, China is planning to build aircraft carriers”
There are 9 countries in the world have active service aircraft carriers, per your logic, they are all irresponsible power, and that include France, Great Britan, India, Thailand, Spain, Italy, and of course US. India not only planning, but already been building 2 carriers, France and Great Britan are also building at least 2. These are much smaller countries (except India), not to mention the population, so you are saying it’s reasonable for them to have carriers and it doesn’t make sense for China to even “planning” to build carriers, I fail to understand your logic here.
In #25 your wrote: “Froy, you’re ignoring extremely aggressive conduct, such as the lasering of American satellites in 2006 and the daily cyber attacks on the United States and its allies.”
Now, could you share with us your reference that shows solid evidence that these incidents actually happened and not some conspiracy theory that folks put out on internet for various motives. I couldn’t imagine if China shined our Satellite with laser and the millitary just kept quiet about it, there would be an official statement and response from our side if this was really happened.
I agree with your quote of Rumfield, so could you please clarify these facts? thanks in advance.
Chris Patten in his Oct. 29 article “What the world will want from a new American leader” said:
“We all look to the next U.S. president to re-engage with the world community and international organizations, accepting that even a superpower should accept the rules that apply to others.” For once, I agree with him.
Everyone, I am on the road and will answer the lastest postings when I return home tomorrow. Until then, apologies for the delay in responding.
And, as always, thanks for your comments.
Sully, all you say makes sense, yet we are building carriers and the Chinese want to do so too. Go figure.
Old MSgt, fallout can float across the Pacific. It’s better that we maintain the peace. And by the way, do we really want to surrender sovereign U.S. territory in the Pacific?
HenryCA, thanks for your posting.
You write: “Why you single out China as the aggressor?” Because China is the only country maintaining claims thousands of miles from its shores and claiming the entire South China Sea. China is regularly violating the territorial waters of Japan with no justification for its actions, and no other country apart from North Korea is engaged in such regular violations of another’s seas.
You write: “If you check the history of using force in the disputed area, I suspect China is the one that shows more restraint.” China invaded Mischief Reef a decade ago and has been involved in more military actions in the disputed areas than any other nation.
You write: “These are much smaller countries (except India), not to mention the population, so you are saying it’s reasonable for them to have carriers and it doesn’t make sense for China to even “planning” to build carriers, I fail to understand your logic here.” In saying China is planning to build aircraft carriers, I was merely correcting a mistatement made by another poster. I was not commenting on the responsibility or irresponsibility of such plans. In general, I believe it is understandable that China wants a carrier force of its own.
You wrote: “I agree with your quote of Rumfield, so could you please clarify these facts? thanks in advance.” The lasering of the satellites was covered in Defense News in late 2006. The best source on China’s cyber attacks is John Tkacik’s piece from about a year ago. If you can’t find them, let me know and I will dig them up for you.
You wrote: “For once, I agree with him.” I generally share your opinion.