Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Wednesday, April 13, 2016
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Hear Hillary Clinton Defend Her Role in Honduras Coup When Questioned by Juan González
With the New York primary less than a week away, the race for the Democratic nomination continues to heat up. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will meet Thursday in Brooklyn for their first debate in over a month. We begin today’s show looking at Hillary Clinton and Honduras. Earlier this week, the former secretary of state publicly defended her role in the 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Since the coup, Honduras has become one of the most violent places in the world. Clinton was asked about Honduras during a meeting with the New York Daily News editorial board on Saturday. The question was posed by Democracy Now!’s own Juan González.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: With the New York primary less than a week away, the race for the Democratic nomination continues to heat up. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will meet Thursday in Brooklyn for their first debate in over a month. We begin today’s show looking at Hillary Clinton and Honduras. Earlier this week, the former secretary of state publicly defended her role in the 2009 coup in Honduras, when the military seized democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in the middle of the night, deposed him and sent him into exile. Since the coup, Honduras has become one of the most violent places in the world. Clinton was asked about Honduras during a meeting with the New York Daily News editorial board on Saturday. The question was posed by Democracy Now!’s Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Secretary Clinton, I’d like to ask you, if I can, about Latin America—
HILLARY CLINTON: Yes, Juan, yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —and a policy specifically that you were directly involved in: the coup in Honduras.
HILLARY CLINTON: Mm-hmm.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As you know, in 2009, the military overthrew President Zelaya.
HILLARY CLINTON: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There was a period there where the OAS was trying to isolate that regime. But the—apparently, some of the emails that have come out as a result of State Department releases show that some of your top aides were urging you to declare it a military coup, cut off U.S. aid. You didn’t do that.
HILLARY CLINTON: Mm-hmm.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You ended up negotiating with Óscar Arias a deal for new elections.
HILLARY CLINTON: Mm-hmm, right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But the situation in Honduras has continued to deteriorate.
HILLARY CLINTON: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There’s been a few hundred people killed by government forces. There’s been all these children fleeing, and mothers, from Honduras over the border into the United States. And just a few weeks ago, one of the leading environmental activists, Berta Cáceres, was assassinated in her home.
HILLARY CLINTON: Right, right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Do you have any concerns about the role that you played in that particular situation, not necessarily being in agreement with your top aides in the State Department?
HILLARY CLINTON: Well, let me again try to put this in context. The Legislature—or the national Legislature in Honduras and the national judiciary actually followed the law in removing President Zelaya. Now, I didn’t like the way it looked or the way they did it, but they had a very strong argument that they had followed the Constitution and the legal precedents. And as you know, they really undercut their argument by spiriting him out of the country in his pajamas, where they sent, you know, the military to, you know, take him out of his bed and get him out of the country. So this was—this began as a very mixed and difficult situation.
If the United States government declares a coup, you immediately have to shut off all aid, including humanitarian aid, the Agency for International Development aid, the support that we were providing at that time for a lot of very poor people. And that triggers a legal necessity. There’s no way to get around it. So, our assessment was, we will just make the situation worse by punishing the Honduran people if we declare a coup and we immediately have to stop all aid for the people, but we should slow off and try to stop anything that the government could take advantage of, without calling it a coup.
So, you’re right. I worked very hard with leaders in the region and got Óscar Arias, the Nobel Prize winner, to take the lead on trying to broker a resolution without bloodshed. And that was very important to us, that, you know, Zelaya had friends and allies, not just in Honduras, but in some of the neighboring countries, like Nicaragua, and that we could have had a terrible civil war that would have been just terrifying in its loss of life. So I think we came out with a solution that did hold new elections, but it did not in any way address the structural, systemic problems in that society. And I share your concern that it’s not just government actions; drug gangs, traffickers of all kinds are preying on the people of Honduras.
So I think we need to do more of a Colombian plan for Central America, because remember what was going on in Colombia when first my husband and then followed by President Bush had Plan Colombia, which was to try to use our leverage to rein in the government in their actions against the FARC and the guerrillas, but also to help the government stop the advance of the FARC and guerrillas, and now we’re in the middle of peace talks. It didn’t happen overnight; it took a number of years. But I want to see a much more comprehensive approach toward Central America, because it’s not just Honduras. The highest murder rate is in El Salvador, and we’ve got Guatemala with all the problems you know so well.
So, I think, in retrospect, we managed a very difficult situation, without bloodshed, without a civil war, that led to a new election. And I think that was better for the Honduran people. But we have a lot of work to do to try to help stabilize that and deal with corruption, deal with the violence and the gangs and so much else.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton responding to a question from Democracy Now!'s Juan González on Saturday during her meeting with the New York Daily News editorial board. Juan later wrote about the exchange in a column for the Daily News titled "Clinton's Policy was a Latin American Crime Story." We’ll link to it on our website. ... Read More →

"She's Baldly Lying": Dana Frank Responds to Hillary Clinton's Defense of Her Role in Honduras Coup
As Hillary Clinton seeks to defend her role in the 2009 Honduras coup, we speak with Dana Frank, an expert on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras. "This is breathtaking that she’d say these things. I think we’re all kind of reeling that she would both defend the coup and defend her own role in supporting its stabilization in the aftermath," Frank says. "I want to make sure that the listeners understand how chilling it is that a leading presidential candidate in the United States would say this was not a coup. … She’s baldly lying when she says we never called it a coup."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on Honduras, we are joined by—Hillary Clinton and the legacy of the 2009 coup—Dana Frank, is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an expert on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras.
Professor Frank, it’s great to have you with us. Well, Hillary Clinton said a lot in this five-minute exchange with Juan González. Respond.
DANA FRANK: Well, I just want to say this is like breathtaking that she’d say these things. I think we’re all kind of reeling that she would both defend the coup and defend her own role in supporting its stabilization in the aftermath. I mean, first of all, the fact that she says that they did it legally, that the Honduras judiciary and Congress did this legally, is like, oh, my god, just mind-boggling. The fact that she then is going to say that it was not an unconstitutional coup is incredible, when she actually had a cable, that we have in the WikiLeaks, in which U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens says it was very clearly an illegal and unconstitutional coup. So she knows this from day one. She even admits in her own statement that it was the Honduran military, that she says, well, this was the only thing that was wrong there, that it was the military that took Zelaya out of the country, as opposed to somehow that it was an illegal thing we did—that the Honduran government did, deposing a president.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to that WikiLeaks cable on Honduras. The U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, sent a cable to Washington on July 24, 2009, less than a month after the coup. The subject line was "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup." The cable asserted, quote, "there is no doubt" that the events of June 28, 2009, "constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup," unquote. The Embassy listed arguments by supporters of the coup to claim its legality, and dismissed each of them, saying, quote, "none ... has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution." The Embassy went on to say the Honduran military had no legal authority to remove President Zelaya from office or from Honduras. The Embassy also characterized the Honduran military’s actions as an "abduction" and kidnapping that was unconstitutional. Again, this was the U.S. Embassy memo that was sent from Honduras to Washington. Professor Frank?
DANA FRANK: Well, I want to make sure that the listeners understand how chilling it is that the leading presidential—a leading presidential candidate in the United States would say this was not a coup. The second thing is that she’s baldly lying when she says we never called it a coup; we didn’t, because that would mean we have to suspend the aid. Well, first of all, they repeatedly called it a coup. We can see State Department statements for months calling it a coup and confirming, yes, we call it a coup. What she refused to do was to use the phrase "military coup." So, she split hairs, because Section 7008 of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act for that year very clearly says that if it’s a coup significantly involving the military, the U.S. has to immediately suspend all aid. So she—they decided to have this interpretation that it was a coup, but not a military coup. So, she, Hillary Clinton—and Obama, for that matter, I want to make clear—in violation of U.S. law, that very clearly said if there’s a coup, they have to cut the military aid and that—all other aid to the country, she violated the law, decided, well, it wasn’t a military coup, when of course it was. It was the military that put him on the plane, which she says in her statement.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the memo is very clear.
DANA FRANK: Well, the Hugo Llorens cable is very clear. But look, even what she said on Saturday, she says, well, the military put him on the plane; that was the only problem here. She’s admitting it was a military-led coup and that so, therefore, she’s in violation of the law—so is Obama—by not immediately suspending the aid. And here she’s saying, "Well, we never called it a coup." I mean, hello, we have so many public statements in which the State Department called it a coup.
AMY GOODMAN: In March 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to meet with the Honduran president, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, whose election was boycotted by opponents of the coup that overthrew Zelaya. Hillary Clinton urged Latin American countries at the time to normalize ties with the coup government.
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: We think that Honduras has taken important and necessary steps that deserve the recognition and the normalization of relations. I have just sent a letter to the Congress of the United States notifying them that we will be restoring aid to Honduras. Other countries in the region say that, you know, they want to wait a while. I don’t know what they’re waiting for, but that’s their right, to wait.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Hillary Clinton in 2010, Professor Frank.
DANA FRANK: I mean, what she did at the time was she played out the strategy—Obama and Clinton played out the strategy—that they would delay negotiations. They treated Micheletti, the post-coup dictator, as an equal partner to democratically elected President Zelaya, moved the negotiations into a sphere they could control and then delayed until the already scheduled elections in November. The problem, as you say, is that this—that almost all the opposition had pulled out of that election. All international observers, like the Carter Center or the U.N., had pulled out, refusing to observe that election—the only observers were the U.S. Republican Party—and saying that this was not a legitimate election. And then, the very first—that day, even before the polls close, the U.S. recognizes the outcome of the election. And this is what we used to call a demonstration election: Let’s just have any election and call this over and call that election—call that election legitimate.
AMY GOODMAN: Also in 2010, at the annual meeting of the Organization of American States, member nations remained divided over whether to allow Honduras back into the OAS. Honduras was expelled from the body the year before, after the military coup ousted Zelaya. This is Hillary Clinton then.
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: Our ongoing discussions about Honduras makes clear the urgency of this agenda. As we emphasized, when the United States along with the rest of the hemisphere condemned the coup in Honduras, these interruptions of democracy should be completely relegated to the past. And it is a credit to this organization that they have become all but nonexistent in the Americas. Now it is time for the hemisphere, as a whole, to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community.
AMY GOODMAN: In her memoir, Hard Choices, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton wrote about the days following the 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted the democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya. She wrote, quote, "In the subsequent days I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot," unquote. That was from the hardcover version of Hillary Clinton’s memoir. That section was later removed from the paperback version. The significance of this, Professor Frank?
DANA FRANK: Well, I mean, it’s incredible this woman is a presidential candidate, that she’s doing like things like this, the fact that she would say we wanted to "render the question of Zelaya moot," we wanted to bury the democratically elected president’s existence and act like the coup didn’t happen. I mean, that’s why it’s so terrifying that today—or rather, on Saturday, she would say—she would defend this coup, say it wasn’t a coup, and defend her actions in installing this terrifically horrific, scary post-coup regime. And, of course, that she would cut that out of her memoir, in the paperback version, is also very scary.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of Hillary Clinton’s stance then? And let’s remember, she was secretary of state serving the president—the president, of course, Barack Obama. What responsibility does the secretary of state have in this? And what did it mean for Honduras right up through today?
DANA FRANK: Well, Obama handed Latin America over to her and allowed her to carry forward this policy. I mean, it was certainly—Obama made some noises the very first day or two, and then, after that, was largely silent and handed over to Secretary of State Clinton. Clearly, he was her boss. If he didn’t approve of this, it wouldn’t have happened. And so, I think it’s really important when we talk about Hillary Clinton, the candidate, what she’s doing, to also talk about Obama’s responsibility for that and Obama’s responsibility for what’s happened since, because I think, as a lot of people know, that coup and the illegitimate election that followed it, that Hillary Clinton is celebrating so clearly in her statements, opened the door to this complete—almost complete destruction of the rule of law in Honduras. People hear about, oh, the gangs and violence and drug traffickers are taking over. Well, that’s because the post-coup governments, both of Micheletti, Lobo and now Juan Orlando Hernández, have completely destroyed the rule of law, because they’re in cahoots with these various forms of organized crime and drug traffickers and violence against the Honduran people. So, this whole post-coup regime has also led to this tremendous corruption of the judiciary and the police and the military, for that matter. So, that’s just—what’s happened to Honduras, it’s not just like there are randomly violent people down there. This is a U.S.-supported regime. The aftermath of the coup, if you look at all these statistics—yes, there was no—it’s not like there was a golden age before the coup, but this tremendous destruction of the basic rule of law in Honduras.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go to what happened most recently in Honduras. Last month, gunmen assassinated Berta Cáceres, a well-known Honduran dissident, winner of the prestigious 2015 Goldman Environment Prize. They assassinated her in her home. In 2014, Berta Cáceres spoke about Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2009 coup with the Argentine TV program Resumen Latinoamericano.
BERTA CÁCERES: [translated] We’re coming out of a coup that we can’t put behind us. We can’t reverse it. It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country. The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras. And here, she, Clinton, recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency. There were going to be elections. And the international community—officials, the government, the grand majority—accepted this, even though we warned this was going to be very dangerous and that it would permit a barbarity, not only in Honduras but in the rest of the continent. And we’ve been witnesses to this.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Honduran environmentalist, indigenous activist Berta Cáceres speaking in 2014, murdered last month in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras. Talk about what Berta Cáceres said and the significance of her assassination, this horror that took place in Honduras, what she—why she was so prominent and top of the target list in Honduras.
DANA FRANK: Well, Berta Cáceres was this amazing, inspiring indigenous leader and environmental activist. And also—
AMY GOODMAN: Did you know her?
DANA FRANK: Yes, I did. I didn’t know her very well personally. I had spent time with her in San Francisco and Oakland when she got the Goldman Prize last year. I remember first meeting her when she had gotten a phone call about the botched autopsy of the people that were killed by the DEA in Honduras. And, of course, her—we don’t even know the results of her own autopsy today, so the ironies of that are really chilling. I mean, she was so inspiring and so beautiful. If people google Berta Cáceres, you’ll see in every picture she’s glowing. You can just feel her presence. And it’s, of course, this tremendous heartbreak for all of us.
And I want to make sure people understand that this is the—this is the biggest assassination since the coup. There have been hundreds of people that have been assassinated, both by state security forces and by private actors and death squads, but they never touched the top leadership of the opposition. And Berta wasn’t just an indigenous environmental leader, she was a top leader of the opposition. In fact, when the resistance came to—came to the Lenca territories, she gave this beautiful speech welcoming everybody, that was one of the most beautiful speeches I’ve ever heard. And so, what’s going on now is the fact—and she was so internationally renowned. Speaker of the House—excuse me, ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi gave a whole reception in her honor last year. And we did—everybody did everything they could to protect Berta, and she was still assassinated. And this is a clear message by the Honduran elite, by the Honduran government, by the Honduran right, that they’ll kill anybody now. And that’s—I want people to understand how terrifying that is, that everybody in Honduras now feels they can be killed, no matter how famous they are.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, on Sunday, Bill Clinton, the former president, spoke at the New York Hall of Science in Corona, Queens. He was interrupted by protesters who were shouting in Spanish, "Hillary Clinton, you have Berta’s blood on your hands!"
PROTESTER 1: Hillary Clinton supports mass deportation! Hillary Clinton supports mass deportation! Remember Berta Cáceres! Remember Berta Cáceres!
PROTESTER 2: Today we went to protest an event that was appealing to Latino communities to support Hillary Clinton at the Hall of Science in Corona, Queens. And we had a banner that said, "Hillary has blood on her hands." And we were removed by the police immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: Protesters chanting, "Hillary, we don’t forgive. Hillary, we don’t forget," when Bill Clinton spoke at the New York Hall of Science in Queens this weekend. Professor Frank?
DANA FRANK: Well, I mean, it’s so beautiful just to see the protests and to understand that there’s a tremendous critique of U.S. policy on Honduras, that’s been going on since the day of the coup, that doesn’t get covered at all in the press.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did the U.S. support the coup?
DANA FRANK: Ah, there’s a big question. I mean, I think it’s—I think it’s really about the U.S. pushback against the democratically elected governments of the left and the center-left that came to power in Latin America in the '90s and in the 2000s—Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, El Salvador, all these countries. And Zelaya was the weakest link in that chain. He, himself, did not come out of a big social movement base at the time of his election, certainly since the coup. And I think they were—the U.S. was looking for a way to push back against that. There's a very important military base, U.S. military base, Soto Cano Air Force Base, in Honduras. And Honduras has always been the most captive nation of the United States in Latin America. So, I think they were testing what they could get away with. And they got away with it. It was the first domino pushing back against democracy in Latin America and reasserting U.S. power, in service to a transnational corporate agenda.
AMY GOODMAN: Your final comment, Professor Frank, in this 2016 presidential election year and in looking at U.S. policy towards Latin America and Honduras?
DANA FRANK: Well, we certainly need to hold Hillary Clinton responsible and to say how terrifying and chilling it is that she would defend a military coup. Like, who is it that we’re talking about here? And the second thing is to also see that this isn’t just about Hillary Clinton. It’s about Obama, it’s about Vice President Biden, who’s in charge of Latin America policy now, and it’s about Secretary of State John Kerry. They are very clearly celebrating and supporting and giving increased funding to the current government of Juan Orlando Hernández, that is continuing this war against the Honduran people. I mean, he’s a dictator. He has overthrown parts of the Supreme Court and illegally named a new Supreme Court that’s full of allegedly corrupt figures. He has—he backed the coup. He illegally named a new attorney—led the illegal naming of a new attorney general. And he has admitted to stealing—we don’t know the exact amount—into the tens of millions of dollars from the national health service and siphoning off into his own campaign. I mean, this is a criminal that the United States is supporting in office.
AMY GOODMAN: Dana Frank, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, expert on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras. We’re on the road at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
When we come back, we’re going to look at U.S. policy toward Afghan refugees. And finally, John Kerry is the first U.S. sitting secretary of state to go to Hiroshima, the site of the only [sic] nuclear attack in the world. It was the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. We will look at nuclear policy over the last years. Stay with us. ... Read More →

As John Kerry Visits Hiroshima, U.S. Quietly Launches $1 Trillion Effort to Upgrade Nuclear Arsenal
On Monday, John Kerry became the first secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city destroyed by a U.S. nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945. Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the U.S. dropped another nuclear bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands were killed. The United States is the only country ever to drop an atomic bomb. Kerry offered no apology for the U.S. nuclear attack but called for "a world free from nuclear weapons." Despite his remarks, the Obama administration has been quietly upgrading its nuclear arsenal to create smaller, more precise nuclear bombs as part of a massive effort that will cost up to $1 trillion over three decades. We speak to Marylia Kelley. Her group, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, just published a report titled "Trillion Dollar Trainwreck: Out-of-control U.S. nuclear weapons programs accelerate spending, proliferation, health and safety risks."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, we are on the road in California. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re on a 100-city tour, now at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, heading to Santa Cruz tonight. Then we’ll be in Los Angeles tomorrow night and heading through Northern California on the weekend. On Monday, we’ll be in Salt Lake City, celebrating community media around the country.
Well, on Monday, John Kerry became the first secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city destroyed by a U.S. nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped another nuclear bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese people were killed. The United States is the only country to ever drop an atomic bomb. Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, but offered no apology for the U.S. nuclear attack. He said Hiroshima was a gut-wrenching reminder the world should abandon nuclear weapons.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Going through this museum was a reminder of the depth of obligation that every single one of us in public life carries, in fact, every person in position of responsibility carries, to work for peace, to continue the efforts that President Obama and other leaders came together to talk about in Washington a few days at the Nuclear Security Summit, to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, President Obama hosted more than 50 world leaders for his fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit, focused on efforts to lock down vulnerable atomic materials to prevent nuclear terrorism. Obama inaugurated the summit nearly six years ago after a 2009 speech in Prague laying out the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. Despite both Obama’s and Kerry’s remarks, the United States has been quietly upgrading its nuclear arsenal to create smaller, more precise nuclear bombs as part of a massive effort that will cost up to $1 trillion over three decades.
Well, a new report by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability details the government’s nuclear proliferation plan. For more, we’re joined by one of the report’s authors. The report is titled "Trillion Dollar Trainwreck: Out-of-control U.S. nuclear weapons programs accelerate spending, proliferation, health and safety risks." Marylia Kelley is executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, or Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, a partner organization with the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
MARYLIA KELLEY: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of John Kerry being the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to go to Hiroshima.
MARYLIA KELLEY: Well, symbolism is important, so we certainly support that and support Obama—excuse me—and support Obama going. But it can’t be mere symbolism and photo op. Kerry went empty-handed. The United States needs to go with a concrete plan to roll back its own nuclear weapons program. You cannot preach abstinence, in terms of nuclear weapons, from the biggest bar stool in the room. And so, we are pressing President Obama to go to Hiroshima, but to go with an announcement that he will cancel a new warhead and new cruise missile—together, they’re called the Long-Range Standoff weapon.
As you noted, there’s a trillion-dollar plan over the next 30 years to upgrade every single part of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile. And right now, as we’re speaking, at Livermore Lab, an hour, hour-15 minutes from here, they’re designing a new warhead, a particularly destabilizing new warhead, to sit atop a new cruise missile. This Long-Range Standoff weapon, if you think about what that name means, it means that an airplane will be able to stand off its intended target by thousands of miles, launch a smart nuclear weapon that will hug the terrain and be radar-evading and will arrive as a surprise nuclear attack. It is a weapon that goes beyond deterrence. No matter what you may think of deterrence, positively or negatively, it goes beyond deterrence. This is about nuclear war fighting. This is about potentially initiating a nuclear war. Additionally, the conventional version and the nuclear version will be indistinguishable. So if it is picked up on radar, a country will not know whether it’s being attacked by a nuclear or a conventional weapon. And that could trigger a nuclear response if it’s a nuclear-armed state.
So we’re actually in a very, very dangerous place. And the United States is initiating a new nuclear arms race, because the other nuclear-armed states, of course, when they look at our, quote-unquote, "modernization program," are now beginning their own. So we need this to be rolled back. If Obama goes to Hiroshima, he needs to use that as an opportunity, not to speak empty promises and rhetoric about an eventual world free of nuclear weapons, but to make concrete proposals about how the United States is going to take steps in that direction and how we’re going to change course, because right now we’re taking giant steps in the opposite direction.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the trillion-dollar trainwreck, Marylia Kelley?
MARYLIA KELLEY: It is a plan that would upgrade every single nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. It will design new nuclear weapons. I talked about one, the Long-Range Standoff warhead. We’re also designing a new nuclear bomb that will be forward-deployed in NATO countries, called the B-6112. This—it’s getting a new tail fin kit so that it will become the first gravity-dropped bomb that then becomes a guided nuclear weapon. There are new options being put into nuclear weapons—submarine-launched ICBMs, land base-launched, all legs of the triad. And they’re getting new heights of burst option. They’re getting new precision options. They’re getting new dial-a-yield options.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the alternative, in this last minute?
MARYLIA KELLEY: The alternative is to cancel this aggressive new nuclear weapons program. And we can curate the United States nuclear weapons stockpile, maintaining the existing safety and reliability until such time as the nuclear weapons are dismantled, pursuant to U.S. obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And the world is gathering in May, next month, May 2nd, in Geneva at the United Nations to discuss the steps to doing this and to discuss the legal requirements of global disarmament. And the United States is boycotting. So we need—
AMY GOODMAN: Boycotting why? Ten seconds.
MARYLIA KELLEY: The United States is boycotting it because it doesn’t believe these discussions are useful or productive. But, of course, they are the most important discussions on the planet. And we need to close the legal gap, and we need to actually get the United States and all of the other nuclear weapons states to live up to their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
AMY GOODMAN: Marylia, we’re going to link to your report —
MARYLIA KELLEY: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —at democracynow.org, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, or Communities Against a Radioactive Environment. That does it for the show. We’ll continue the discussion and post it online at Democracy Now!
Tonight, Santa Cruz at the Rio Theatre, tomorrow at Claremont at Pitzer and then back to Los Angeles. Then we’ll be in Santa Rosa, Willits and Redway, Sunday in Davis, Chico and Berkeley, before heading Monday to Salt Lake City. ... Read More →

"America's Afghan Refugee Crisis": 15 Years into War, U.S. Urged to Resettle More Displaced Afghans
By the time the next president takes office in January, U.S. troops will have been in Afghanistan for over 15 years. It is already the longest war in U.S. history. Just last week, local authorities said U.S. drone strikes killed 17 civilians. According to the United Nations, the number of civilians killed or injured in Afghanistan has risen to a record high for the seventh year in a row amid violent attacks by the Taliban and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The United Nations said more than 3,500 civilians were killed and more than 7,400 wounded in 2015. More than 2.5 million Afghans are living abroad as refugees. Many have attempted to make it to Europe, where country after country has closed its borders to new refugees. A controversial new EU-Turkey plan has just taken effect calling for all newly arriving refugees to be deported back to Turkey. What role should the United States be playing in resettling refugees from Afghanistan? We speak to Stanford professor Robert Crews, author of a recent piece in Foreign Policy titled "America’s Afghan Refugee Crisis."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re on the road as part of a 100-city tour, now at Stanford University in Palo Alto. Tonight we’ll be in Santa Cruz.
By the time the next president takes office in January, U.S. troops will have been in Afghanistan for over 15 years. It’s already the longest war in U.S. history. Just last week, local authorities said U.S. drone strikes killed 17 civilians. According to the United Nations, the number of civilians killed or injured in Afghanistan has risen to a record high for the seventh year in a row. The United Nations said more than 3,500 civilians were killed and more than 7,400 wounded in 2015. More than two-and-a-half million Afghans are living abroad as refugees. Many have attempted to make it to Europe, where country after country has closed its borders to new refugees. A controversial new EU-Turkey plan has just taken effect, calling for all newly arriving refugees to be deported back to Turkey.
Well, today we look at what role the U.S. should be playing in resettling refugees from Afghanistan. We’re joined now by Stanford University historian Robert Crews. His recent piece for Foreign Policy is headlined "America’s Afghan Refugee Crisis." He wrote, quote, "Over the decades, the United States has not only lacked the capacity to fix Afghan society, but has played an essential role in breaking it," end-quote. He goes on to suggest the U.S. should fulfill its "historic, moral, and political responsibility" and enable the, quote, "mass resettlement of Afghan migrants here." Robert Crews is director of Islamic Studies at Stanford University, author of several books, most recently, Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Crews.
ROBERT CREWS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what should happen now, the scope of the problem of Afghan refugees. And what is the U.S. role?
ROBERT CREWS: Well, the United States has approached this problem for over a decade and a half now with some fairly flawed misconceptions about Afghan society and Afghan politics. So, my comments about the refugee crisis also extend to really a much broader critique of America’s approach in Afghanistan itself. I think we’ve been burdened by this idea that we’re dealing with a primitive society, a society that is inherently barbaric and violent. And we fail to see how we, in fact, have shaped the society. We have made it what it’s become today. And, in fact, our imprint goes back many decades. One can cite our role in the 1980s, one can cite our role since 2001, but, really, it’s a much broader problem, a whole series of policy failures. I think the most important one is really a failure of imagination, a failure of the acknowledgment of our responsibility in causing Afghanistan to be a place that so many thousands, hundreds of thousands of people want to flee.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think the U.S. should resettle Afghan refugees here? And what would that resettlement program look like?
ROBERT CREWS: Well, obviously it’s not a very popular policy, given our contemporary politics and the positions of our presidential candidates across the board. But we’re a large country. We’re a relatively wealthy country. And we have failed to defeat the Taliban. We’ve failed to create a political order which is sustainable. We’ve failed to create conditions for any kind of economic stability in the wake of what is mostly an American and NATO withdrawal. So I think the United States does have a responsibility. We’ve allocated a very limited number of visas, roughly 7,000, to Afghans who’ve served as translators and guides for the armed forces. But to my way of thinking, that’s far too narrow. It’s politicized the whole visa process. It’s essentially, I think, actually caused some of those figures to be in greater danger, because it’s made them even more of a target for—by their opponents. I think we have the resources. And I think this should be a reminder to Americans that when we intervene militarily abroad, to add to perhaps the Colin Powell’s—you know, the Powell Doctrine, if you break it, you own it—this should be part of the price tag of military intervention.
AMY GOODMAN: In December, while we were in Paris covering the U.N. climate summit, Democracy Now! traveled to Calais, the largest refugee camp in France, where 6,000 to 7,000 people are camped out in makeshift tents. One of the people we spoke to was Najibullah, an Afghan national, who said he had worked as an interpreter for seven months with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, as well as for a number of months with a U.S. private contractor called Creative International. He had applied for a visa to the United States but was denied.
NAJIBULLAH: I applied for a special immigration visa, but they—because I was working just for seven months, the U.S. government refused to give me visa because they said, "You just worked for seven months, not one year." And I sent a letter from the Creative International company that I—as evidence that I worked with them also. So, if we put all together, it becomes more than one year. ...
What I am trying to say, that working with the U.S. government, it doesn’t matter; you work just one day or a year or two years or for four years, it doesn’t matter to the Taliban. As long as you work with them just one hour, you’re condemned to death. So, that’s what happened to me. I was condemned to death. And I am asking the U.S. government why they refuse me to give me a visa. And that’s why I’m here. That’s why I am here, I’m facing this difficulty.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Najibullah. We met him in Calais, a refugee camp known as "The Jungle," the largest refugee camp in France. There was an entire section of the camp that Afghan refugees camped out in. Robert Crews, so he worked—Najibullah worked for the U.S. Marines. He worked for this contractor, Creative International. Yet he could not get a visa to come to the United States, despite the fact that he said if he had worked one hour for the U.S., the Taliban would condemn him to death, and that’s what happened.
ROBERT CREWS: Right. I think it’s clearly a betrayal. But I would add that for many Afghans who are caught in the middle, caught in the middle between Taliban and Afghan National Army forces or those who fall victim to American drone strikes, which persist, or to other airstrikes, like the one you cited in the east last week, many more Afghans, beyond this class of people who have served the military, I think are also entitled to some kind of redress, because they are living in circumstances beyond their control, but very much shaped by what we have done there.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about this policy that you have to have worked for a full year, or you won’t to be protected?
ROBERT CREWS: I think, actually, it’s now been extended to a term of two years.
AMY GOODMAN: Two years?
ROBERT CREWS: But the numbers are still quite minimal. And if one looks beyond this special visa program, the number of Afghans who are admitted under other conditions is extremely—very, very few. I mean, there are actually just a few hundred people who’ve been admitted per year in the last four or five years.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask about comments by the former CIA director, Michael Hayden, on drone warfare in a New York Times opinion piece in February headlined "To Keep America Safe, Embrace Drone Warfare." Hayden writes, quote, "The program is not perfect. No military program is. But here is the bottom line: It works. I think it fair to say that the targeted killing program has been the most precise and effective application of firepower in the history of armed conflict." Hayden goes on to say, quote, "Civilians have died, but in my firm opinion, the death toll from terrorist attacks would have been much higher if we had not taken action." Again, the former head of the CIA.
ROBERT CREWS: There’s a lot we can say about that essay, and I would recommend that your viewers and listeners read it. There’s a bit of poetry there which is quite remarkable. These are military strategies which are also part of the deeper story of this flow of refugees. These drone strikes do in fact capture lots of civilians. That is, they make whole towns, villages, hamlets uninhabitable. Right? They actually create terror. And Hayden here has mirrored the logic of militants around the globe, who have failed to distinguish between civilians and combatants. This idea that very few civilians are dying, in fact, is unproved. I think we have lots of evidence to the contrary. And until the Obama administration opens up its books and actually lets us see what’s happening, we can only assume that the contradictory and countervailing reports are true and that lots of civilians, in fact, are dying, and these are creating, in fact, more militants, as some security officials maintain. At the end, to return to the refugee crisis, this is part of what is making part of Afghanistan and North-West Frontier of Pakistan really uninhabitable for lots of populations.
AMY GOODMAN: You have suggested in your writing that Afghans now trust the Taliban more than they do the Afghan military.
ROBERT CREWS: So, that’s some Afghans. So it’s some Afghans in the south and in the east areas, where they have faced foreign military attacks—right?—airstrikes, and where they have faced abuses at the hands of Afghan police, Afghan militias supported by the United States and the central government, and by the Afghan National Army and police, who are often corrupt and who have employed often very brutal methods in these territories. So, it’s not a broad statement that would apply to all Afghans. It tends to apply more limited—in more limited ways to people in the south and the east.
AMY GOODMAN: So the program you would recommend, even if it is unpopular—
ROBERT CREWS: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —for Afghans coming to the United States, elaborate further.
ROBERT CREWS: Sure. You know, I think we’ve done this with populations in the past. I mean, we’ve done this with Iraqis, to some degree, with Somalis. Here in the Bay Area, we can point to the history of the resettlement of Vietnamese populations in the wake of the Vietnam War. I think if one looks at these populations—you know, take the case of the Vietnamese or take the case of the Afghans who came in the 1980s—these communities have been extraordinarily successful.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s look at the Vietnamese.
ROBERT CREWS: Yes, sure.
AMY GOODMAN: After the Vietnam War, U.N. high commissioner for refugees ultimately resettled 1.3 million Southeast Asians in countries around the world, including 800,000 in the United States.
ROBERT CREWS: Sure. I mean, what could be more American—right?—than opening our doors to the world and becoming better for it? I think that Afghans would make similar contributions. Now, there’s anxiety about a brain drain in some—I’ve had Afghan friends who have challenged my perspective on this, and I much respect that argument. I think that there are Afghans who will and should stay in the country to help to rebuild it. But I don’t think that should be a burden that all should have to bear equally. I mean, what do we say to children who are caught in the crossfire? What do we say to older people who don’t have the means to participate in this project? I think that the—you know, in the end, there will be interest in this program, were it to be inaugurated, but it’s not as if all Afghans would leave, right? It’s not as if—or even just the educated would leave. I think you would get a wide swath of people. But many people would become professionals here. They would make contributions. You know, we have students here at our university in our graduate program. Some of our best students were once refugees, and now look at them. They’ll be stars in their fields. And I think it’s very much an American story that we can identify with any ethnic group.
AMY GOODMAN: And people like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, talking about people like these as threats to this country, that there should be a ban on all Muslims coming into the United States?
ROBERT CREWS: Right. I mean, it’s a very alarming idea. But in the case of the Afghans, I think it goes more deeply, and it actually shaped how we fight this war. We imagine, again, that Afghans are particularly barbaric and warlike and bellicose. I think that has forced us to make certain decisions in the country, in Afghanistan itself—I mean, this resort that Hayden cites here to drone warfare. We imagine Afghans only understand the language of force. And that, of course, is wrong. And in the book that I wrote, that you mentioned, I attempt to challenge how this idea came to be and then to point to alternatives. You know, we’ve misunderstood Afghans. They in fact are quite cosmopolitan. They’ve lived all over the world. They can adapt to circumstances, to everywhere. And there’s nothing necessarily violent about their nature, right? That’s very much a political story that we share with them that goes back for many decades.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Robert Crews, I want to thank you very much—
ROBERT CREWS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: —for being with us. Robert Crews is author of Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation. He’s associate professor of history and director of the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies here at Stanford University.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we turn to the news this week of John Kerry going to Hiroshima, the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to do this. Is he paving the way for President Obama to go to Hiroshima, the site of the U.S. atomic bombing back in 1945? Stay with us. ... Read More →
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