Some Data on Piracy

As you can probably tell, the recent account of pirates attacking a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia has captured my imagination. It's not because of some latent fascination with Blackbeard or Captain Hook. It has more to do with my concern that the spread of anarchy--from failed states to the high seas--has become a major source of insecurity in the world. Attacks on cruise ships (as well as cargo ships and fishing boats) are a manifestation of the problem.

At the risk of spending too much time and energy on what some may consider a back-page story, I want to pass along a bit of data on the incidence of piracy in the world. The following information comes from the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre, which collects data on piracy and armed robery aboard ships.

The total number of attacks on shipping dropped from 445 in 2003 to 325 in 2004. The greatest number of pirate attacks occur in the waters off Indonesia (including the Strait of Malacca, the Java Sea, and the Timor Sea); there were 121 attacks there in 2003, 93 in 2004. Rebels from Aceh have been known to hijack ships in the Northern Malacca Straits, but many recent hijackings have been the work of criminal syndicates.

While most acts of piracy are property crimes only, in 2004 there were 30 crew members murdered in attacks on shipping.

For maps showing the locations of reported acts of piracy in 2004, go here.

Illusions of Righteousness

"No nation, ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality."

--William Sloane Coffin

More on the Indian Ocean Pirates

The attack on a luxury cruise ship off the coast of Somalia yesterday was not the only act of piracy in those waters in recent months. The Russian newspaper Pravda reported two weeks ago that an International Maritime Bureau report documented twenty-three attacks in the area since March 15, 2005. One of the attacks resulted in the Hong Kong-based owner of a liquefied gas tanker paying hijackers $315,000 for the return of the ship after it was seized on April 10, 2005. In another attack on August 15, 2005, three fishing boats and forty-eight Asian fishermen were captured by Somali pirates. All are being held for ransom in Somalia.

According to Pravda, those engaged in piracy off the coast of Somalia are Somali rebels who use the proceeds of their raids to buy weapons.

Cheney's Defense of Torture

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly makes some important points regarding Vice President Cheney's efforts to preserve the freedom to torture detainees in the "war on terror." He also points these comments from Andrew Sullivan concerning Cheney:

He's still furiously lobbying Senators to protect his right to torture. A man who avoided service in Vietnam is lecturing John McCain on the legitimacy of torturing military detainees. But notice he won't even make his argument before Senate aides, let alone the public. Why not? If he really believes that the U.S. has not condoned torture but wants to reserve it for exceptional cases, why not make his argument in the full light of day? You know: where democratically elected politicians operate.

As Drum concludes, "It's enough to make any decent human being puke."

That's about right.

Pirate Attack

Tomorrow's Observer reports that a luxury cruise liner sailing approximately 100 miles off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean came under attack from pirates today. Men on two speedboats fired on the ship, the Seabourn Spirit, with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The ship escaped from the two speedboats after attempting to ram one of them. One crew member suffered minor injuries from shrapnel. None of the 151 passengers was injured.

The McCain Amendment: An Update

Jeanne at Body and Soul offers a good, brief summary of where things stand regarding the McCain Amendment.

Our East European Gulag

Rosa Brooks, writing in today's Los Angeles Times, recounts the news from a Washington Post story published earlier this week about the CIA's use of secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe and questions whether America's values, which served the nation well during the Cold War, have survived the "war on terror." She writes,

During the Cold War, we thought we knew what distinguished us from our Soviet bloc enemies. We did not have a gulag; we did not imprison and torture our enemies. But the war on terror has distorted our national values. We have used some of the same tactics we once decried. The Soviet Union's legacy of terror lives on, its tactics embraced by some of our leaders. Vice President Dick Cheney continues to insist that the McCain amendment, which prohibits U.S. personnel from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, should not be applicable to the CIA.

We Americans have always had an inflated view of our nation's moral righteousness, but rarely has the gap been so dramatic between who we believe ourselves to be and who our actions show us to be in reality.

Reciprocity

Milt Bearden, a former CIA operative, uses his experience working with the mujahidin during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to explain why the United States ought to be extending the protections of the Geneva Conventions even to those detainees who are considered enemy combatants. It boils down to a concern for reciprocity, as this op-ed in today's New York Times notes.

More on Maher Arar

This post from February of this year describes the plight of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was taken into custody by U.S. officials at New York City's Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 and then rendered by the United States to Syria. When he was released a year later--without ever having been charged with a crime--Arar claimed that he had been tortured while in a Syrian prison. According to a report prepared by Stephen J. Toope, former dean of the McGill University School of Law, Arar and other Canadian citizens who were rendered to Syria by the United States were unquestionably tortured while in Syrian custody. Regarding Mr. Arar, the report states, "Although there have been few lasting physical effects, Mr. Arar's psychological state was seriously damaged and he remains fragile. His relationships with members of his immediate family have been significantly impaired. Economically, the family has been devastated."

Meanwhile, the United States Congress is still unwilling to condemn torture unequivocally, although in fairness it appears that an increasing number of Republicans in the House of Representatives are now willing to vote for the McCain Amendment to the defense appropriations bill.

[Via Body and Soul.]

Remembering the Holocaust

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (A/RES/60/7) yesterday that designates January 27 as an annual day of remembrance for victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The date chosen is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 and is already observed in much of Europe (and occasionally at Pepperdine) as the Day of Remembrance.

The resolution, which was introduced by Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia, and the United States, had 104 cosponsors and was adopted by consensus. According to Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, this is the first resolution initiated by Israel to have been passed by the UNGA.

A Shift in the Wind?

"The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting 'cruel,' 'humiliating' and 'degrading' treatment," according to a story in today's New York Times. Although those surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney, including David Addington who was appointed to be Cheney's chief of staff in the wake of Scooter Libby's indictment, continue to resist efforts to curb the administration's use of torture against terrorism suspects, a significant pushback seems at last to be occurring.

The Bush administration has been unwilling to listen even to friendly critics of its policies in the so-called "war on terrorism," but domestic and international pressure to renounce torture may at last be having an impact. At least those interested in adhering to international law and morality are finally able to debate the treatment of detainees.

Names and Faces

The number 2,000 was in the news last week, but it is important that we not forget the human beings behind the number. The New York Times has an excellent interactive site with photos and brief biographies of the 2,000-plus American soldiers who have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003. Take a look and think of the costs of war.

Trick or Treat

I am a day late with this, but James Carroll's columns are always timely. Here, quoting St. Paul and Robert McNamara along the way, he moves from Halloween to the nature of evil to wars and their unintended consequences. Read what he has to say.

Einstein's Assessment

With this being the season for mid-term exams, I am reminded--and will be sure to remind my students--of a comment Albert Einstein once made. He was asked, "Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?" Einstein replied, "That is simple, my friend. It is because politics is more difficult than physics."

Let the CIA Do It

The New York Times reports in tomorrow's edition that Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss met with Senator John McCain last Thursday in an effort to get McCain to support language in the defense appropriations bill that would let the CIA do it. What, you ask, is it? Torture detainees, of course.

After the Senate passed the McCain amendment to bar the abuse of detainees (by a 90-9 vote) almost three weeks ago, the Bush Administration began lobbying Congress to preserve the ability of officials of the United States government to use torture as a means of interrogating suspected terrorists. Now it appears that effort has come to include a direct appeal from the Vice President to Senator McCain asking McCain to amend his own amendment so that at least the CIA could continue to torture prisoners.

McCain told Cheney and Goss no.

There was a time, believe it or not, when American presidents--both Republicans and Democrats--uniformly condemned torture. Now we have a president who is threatening to veto the defense appropriations bill if an amendment banning torture or one mandating an independent commission to investigate the torture of detainees is attached.

God have mercy.

Sixty Years

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the entry into force of the Charter of the United Nations. At a time when considerable attention is being devoted to the future of the U.N. (Ambassador Bolton floated the idea before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week of shifting from a system of mandatory assessments--dues--to a system of voluntary contributions to finance the Organization), I want to offer a few observations about the history of the Charter.

The majority of the work of drafting the Charter occurred prior to the conclusion of World War II. In fact, most of the preparatory work was done at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. during the fall of 1944. The Covenant of the League of Nations, on the contrary, was drafted entirely after the armistice ending World War I had been signed. More importantly, work on the Charter was almost completely dissociated from the diplomatic process of concluding World War II. In contrast, at Versailles in 1919, peace negotiations and negotiations for the creation of the League proceeded hand in hand and the League Covenant, in the end, was embedded in the three treaties of peace proffered to the Central Powers.

One reason work on the Charter was begun rather early was the tenuous nature of the war-time alliance. Significant differences of opinion among the American, British, and Soviet governments were apparent well before Germany's surrender. As Inis Claude noted in Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (4th ed., p. 65), "If the grand alliance for war was to be preserved as a grand alliance for peace, it seemed that there was no time to be lost."

Having secured agreement from the Allies on the basic outlines of the new United Nations Organization by mid-October 1944, the U.S. State Department was in a position to make an early push to gain public support for the Charter that would be signed at San Francisco on June 26, 1945. Almost two million copies of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals were distributed in the United States by the State Department. Speakers were sent all over the country to address civic groups and radio audiences in an effort to explain the proposed U.N. Again, the contrast with the League experience is instructive. As Woodrow Wilson lingered for months in Paris after World War I directing the negotiations that would produce the League Covenant, public support in the U.S. for any form of internationalism evaporated. Wilson's inattention to public opinion was a mistake that Franklin Roosevelt would not repeat.

In the end, the attention to public opinion paid off. On July 28, 1945, the United States Senate gave its consent to the ratification of the Charter by an 89-2 vote. President Truman communicated U.S. ratification on August 8 and, as we note today, the Charter entered into force on October 24.

The Human Security Report

A new report from the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia "shows that most forms of political violence have declined significantly since the end of the Cold War––and finds that the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War."

For more about the report, see this site.

[Via America Abroad at TPM Cafe.]

Frontline: The Torture Question

The PBS series Frontline is examining the question of torture in the "war on terror" in a two-hour program entitled "The Torture Question." The entire program will be available here tomorrow. Interviews, photos, a panel discussion on torture, and other ancillaries are also available on the program web site.

Prosper Resigns

Pierre-Richard Prosper has resigned his position as United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, although not soon enough and not for the right reasons. Indeed, Prosper apparently went quietly without uttering a word of regret about the United States' long downward slide since 9/11 into the ranks of states known to employ torture.

So why did he resign? Like Alberto Gonzales before him, Prosper hopes to ride his success as an apologist for torture into the attorney general's office--the California AG's office in his case. Yesterday Prosper filed papers to run for the Republican nomination for attorney general in the 2006 primaries.

Explain Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Gardez, and Mosul, Mr. Ambassador. Explain your silence. Then think about running for elective office.

Arabic Speakers in the Diplomatic Corps

Anyone interested in the United States Foreign Service or in U.S. relations with the Arabic-speaking world should read former Foreign Service officer Jennifer Bremer's op-ed in today's Washington Post. Bremer notes that as of August 2004 there were only eight people in the U.S. Foreign Service who spoke Arabic at a 4+ or 5 level--the levels at which one might be expected to perform well if asked to speak before an agitated crowd or in an Arabic-language television interview.

Take a look at the piece to gain some insight into America's problems in the Middle East and into the nature of language training for American diplomats as well.

[Via Washington Monthly.]