I. Why Democrats Reject TPP
Senator Bernie Sanders said of the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that "These folks have been proven wrong time after time." Sanders was referring to the failure of prior free trade deals to result in the creation of mass U.S. job growth. Rep Keith Ellison said: "We cannot afford to rush through another NAFTA that values corporate profits above families." Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown referred back to the 2008 presidential race: "During the 2008 presidential primary, I watched Obama argue in Cleveland that we should renegotiate NAFTA. Instead we've seen more empty promises of jobs through exports, while American workers are hit with a flood of imports and jobs shipped overseas."
While campaigning in 2008, Barack Obama stood side-by-side with opponents of ill-considered trade deals. He decried "a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear..."
The Obama administration predicted that the South Korea Free Trade Agreement would create 70,000 jobs and deliver up to $11 billion in exports. Instead, it only increased U.S. exports to Korea by $4 billion, while Korean imports have skyrocketed to more than $12 billion. The U.S. already has a trade deficit with Japan and ten other countries included in the TPP. Since 1997, the deficit with these countries has increased by $151.4 billion. [1]
II. The Yemen Precedent
The U.S.opposed the Palestinian request in the United Nations Security Council to become a member of the International Criminal Court. Nigeria was persuaded by the U.S. to change its vote from "yes" to "abstain."
There is a long-standing precedent, known as the Yemen Precedent, that dates back to the first Gulf War in 1990, when Yemen was one of only two nations -- the other being Cuba -- who voted against endorsing the U.S. proposal to go to war. As soon as Yemen's ambassador put down his hand, the U.S. ambassador was at his side, saying: "That will be the most expensive vote you ever cast." Three days later, the U.S. cut its entire aid budget to Yemen.
The U.S. has used the Yemen Precedent over-and-over again in the United Nations to pressure, threaten and bribe other nations to follow the U.S. lead.
III. U.S. Exceptionalism in Admitting Mistakes
After a drone strike in Pakistan that killed two Western hostages -- one of them being an American -- President Barack Obama stood behind a podium and apologized for the killings. Obama said:, "one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes." In his 2015 State of the Union address, Obama described America as exceptional." When he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, he said, "Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional."
American exceptionalism reflects the belief that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. The claim of American exceptionalism triggered deep concern and even outrage with the leak of a Department of Justice White Paper that describes circumstances under which the President can order the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. There had been little public concern about drone strikes that killed people in other countries; however, killing U.S. citizens was of another order. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was prompted to write a letter to the New York Times, in which he asked: "Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours?"
President Obama insists the CIA and the U.S. military are very careful to avoid Civilian casualties. In May 2013, he declared in a speech at the National Defense University: "Before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured -- the highest standard we can set." Yet, the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which examined nine drone strikes in Yemen, concluded that civilians were killed in every one. A study based on classified military data, conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses and the Center for Civilians in Conflict, concluded that the use of drones in Afghanistan had caused 10 times more civilian deaths than manned fighter aircraft. Other studies show that many civilians are killed in drone strikes.
A fact sheet released by the Obama administration in 2013, specifies that in order to use lethal force, the target must pose a "continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons." But the leaked Justice Department White Paper says that a U.S. citizen can be killed even when there is no "clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future." If there is such a low bar for killing citizens, is there no bar whatever for killing foreigners?
There must also be "near certainty" that the terrorist target is present; however, the CIA did not know who it was slaying when two hostages were killed. This was a "signature strike," that targets "suspicious compounds" in areas controlled by "militants."
Do drone strikes advance "long-term U.S. security interests?" They do not, according to a panel with experienced specialists from both the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, which issued a 77-page report for the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
"The guarantee of due process in the U.S. Constitution as well as in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights must be honored, not just in its breach. That means arrest and fair trial, not summary execution. What we really need is a complete reassessment of Obama's continuation of Bush's 'war on terror..' Until we overhaul our foreign policy and stop invading other countries, changing their regimes, occupying, torturing and indefinitely detaining their people, and uncritically supporting other countries that illegally occupy other peoples' lands, we will never be safe from terrorism." [2]
Footnotes
[1] John Nichols, "Why So Many Democrats Rejected Obama's Lobbying on the Trans-Pacific Trade Deal," The Nation, May 11, 2015.
[2] Marjorie Cohn (professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law), "Challenging American Exceptionalism," Global Research, April 26, 2015.
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