Abusing the Filibuster: Some Stats.

It has been an interesting week since Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option to ensure Presidential nominees are no longer blocked by an increasingly power-hungry Tea Party minority. From the right of the Republican Party, there appears to be a constant “We’re a republic! Not a democracy!” odd little tantrum, in a curiously weak attempt to justify their horrendous inability to accept that they lost the election. It should be noted that the US is indeed a republic, framed by the Constitution, which, in the case of Congressional rule changes quite clearly states:

“Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.”
Article 1; Section 5; Clause 2.

– Also, when it comes to Presidential nominees to executive branch positions, the President has that right. As long as those nominees are qualified, they are entitled to be confirmed, with the President shaping his administration as he sees fit. The Senate traditionally is there to advise and consent, to block only in the most extreme of conditions, and not to usurp that power and use it for fringe-partisanship. The filibuster not only gives a voice to the minority (who are entitled to that voice, via debate), it gives that minority far more power than both the majority party in the Senate, and the President combined.

That being said, it’s true that both President Obama and Harry Reid condemned the nuclear option during the Bush administration, whilst Democrats were the minority party in the Senate. But it is equally true, and needless to point out that President Bush wasn’t facing the sheer force of extreme obstructionism facilitated by the filibuster that the Obama White House faces today.

The nuclear option, in short, means that nominees by the executive branch require a simply majority of 51 votes for appointment, rather than the 60 votes needed if filibustered.

So, why did Harry Reid feel that he had to use a procedural measure to prevent further nominee filibustering in the Senate? Well, it’s quite obvious when you look at the past three years.

Let’s start with the most staggering.
Number of Presidential nominees filibustered over the course of US history: 147.
Number of those Presidential nominees filibustered before Obama took office: 68.
Number of those Presidential nominees filibustered since Obama took office: 79.
More than half of all filibustered nominees for executive branch positions – since before the White House was even built – have taken place during President Obama’s five years as President. This stat alone should be more than enough to convince anyone of the need to curb the abuse of power by a minority wing, or a minority party, that could not win the Presidential election, nor the Senate, nor the popular vote for the House. But in case you’re still on the fence, here are a few more stats:

Between 1949 and 2008, 20 cloture votes had been held to end filibusters, and push for a three-fifths majority vote. In 59 years, 20 votes. Between 2008 and 2013 – just five years – cloture has had to be invoked 27 times.

In President Bush’s two terms, the number of cloture votes for Presidential nominees was 7. In President Clinton’s two terms, the cloture votes for Presidential nominees, was 9. By early 2013, 16 of the President’s executive branch nominees had required cloture votes. In one Presidential term alone.

Interestingly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who seems to have no problem with the obscene amount of obstructionism his party is willing to adopt in preventing the appointment of Presidential nominees, wasn’t too happy with it when the shoe was on the other foot. During the Bush Presidency, McConnell said:

“To correct this abuse, the majority in the Senate is prepared to restore the Senate’s traditions and precedents to ensure that regardless of party, any president’s judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent.”

– Ironically, McConnell is now the King of the obstruction he harshly condemned in 2005.

Damningly for McConnell, on top of the 16 cloture votes by March 2013, we see the situation getting worse. Between March 2013, and November 2013, a staggering 11 more cloture votes – taking the total to 27 – for executive branch positions were required after being targets of filibusters from Senate Republicans.

75 executive branch nominations, to incredibly important positions, have waited an average of 140 days for confirmation. The obstruction in the Senate, leads to gridlock across agencies. This isn’t just unfair, it is dangerous. There is absolutely no need nor requirement for the Senate to demand a super majority for Presidential nominations.

And that’s just on nominees. Motions to end a filibuster by procedure during George Bush’s term, and when the party in the White House also controlled the Senate stood at 130 over two terms. Over just one term, and six months of President Obama’s Presidency, that number stands at 307. The era of block-over-debate had to come to an end.

These incredibly telling figures represent another wing – after the ill-considered Republican shut down – of the Republican strategy to destabilise the operation of government departments that people count on every day, simply because the election did not go their own way. The nuclear option was both necessary and inevitable. The reaction from the Republican camp to Reid’s decision has been predictable. Harry Reid – they claim – had choked democracy. This was the end of America as we know it. The usual hyperbole.

Strangely, the same Republicans didn’t react with equal venom when on September 30th of this year, House Republicans changed House rules to take the power to end a government shutdown away from all members of the House, and bestow it upon the House Majority Leader only. It’s a curious hypocrisy, but nevertheless completely expected from that section of the delusional right that holds nothing but contempt for democracy when it goes against them.

U.S Afghan leak

It is ridiculously rich of the U.S today, to call the release of the Afghan files via Wikileaks, a “criminal act” given the nature of the documents. I wonder what other little gems of terrorism the U.S is hiding. Latin America must have it’s very own building, filled with reports of U.S backed terror operations. Despite the scale of the atrocities in Afghanistan, committed by U.S forces, I guarantee, the “international community” will not condemn the U.S, but will condemn the leak. The “international community“, usually means those who support the U.S. To call the leaks a “criminal act“, from a bunch of malicious criminals, is a little bit rich.

The leak is the biggest in U.S history, and is a political storm waiting to happen. The extent to which the U.S has mislead the public (the documents are from the Bush era, unsurprisingly) should surely result in prosecutions at the very top level of the old regime in Washington? At the very least, it has to be the start of a far more transparent era for U.S foreign policy, which for too long has smashed it’s clenched fist across the World, and condemned anyone who stood in their way.

The log shows:

Coalition forces have killed at least 195 Afghani civilians, and injured 174 more, between 2005 and 2009. Many are the result of Coalition troops shooting unarmed and innocent people, simply because they looked a bit dodgy. And yet Republicans will still insist that this ridiculously pointless war is not in anyway adding to the problem of extremism.

French troops machine gunned a bus full of children, wounding eight.

An operation to kill a Libyan extremist named Al-libi resulted in the deaths of seven children.

U.S troops fired on a bus full of innocent people, killing 15.

Civilian amputations as a result of Coalition troops bombing or shooting the wrong people, so far is huge in number.

The U.S believes that Pakistan is funding and training extremists. Pakistan strongly denies it.

That a secret unit of American forces, is hunting down and killing suspects, without a trial.

That the Taliban have not only acquired surface to air missiles, but have escalated their roadside bomb campaign, and have killed almost 2000 people so far as a result. All covered up by the U.S, who are pretty much failing entirely, much like they did with Vietnam.

One man, called Shum Khan was a deaf and dumb man, living in Malekshay. Out of nowhere, a heavily armed U.S truck rolled into his town, at which point he ran away scared. The War Logs reveal:

”ran at the sight of the approaching coalition forces … out of fear and confusion”

The U.S CIA paramilitaries on board the truck, shouted at him to stop. He couldn’t hear them because he was deaf. He was running away from them, so posed no threat. So to deal with the problem, the paramilitaries shot him. He was wounded but survived. Villagers explained the problem to the troops, who then said they were entitled to shoot him under ”escalation of force” provisions of the US rules of engagement, which i’m pretty sure the shot and injured deaf man did not agree to. The log ends with the U.S not treating the man for gunshot wounds, but paying compensation (known as solatia). The log says:

‘Solatia was made in the form of supplies and the Element mission progressed.”

Such nonchalance. Not a care in the World. Shoot a disabled man, give him a bit of food and clothing, and then move on to the next town.

On March 4th 2007, U.S Marines narrowly escaped a road side bomb, just outside of Jalalabad. The Marines ran away, and shot anyone in their path. This included young girls playing in a nearby field, and a few old men walking along the street, hundreds of metres away from the explosion. Nineteen innocent people were killed, and fifty wounded. The Marines in their reported omitted all of the details, other than the bomb attack and the sound of gunfire. An hour later, an investigative team of U.S soldiers came back to the area, to inspect. They tore cameras away from Journalists and photographers, demanding they delete any photos. A reporter for Tolo TV said that an American soldier had told him, of the photos and film he’d taken of the site: “Delete them, or we’ll delete you.” The soldiers lied, the Marines lied, a subsequent investigation that found no wrong doing lied, and only now, three years later, has it emerged that they lied. The Afghan Human Rights Commission then held its own investigation into the shootings and concluded that a 16 year old newlywed carrying grass had been repeatedly shot and killed, followed by a 75 year old man, who was just walking. The findings prompted a US army colonel to say that the shootings were a “terrible, terrible mistake“, and give the families of the victims just $2000 in compensation. The Marines were unhappy with the Colonel for insulting there competence, and so held their own investigation which cleared them of all wrong doing and said that they acted “appropriately”. No charges were brought, and so killing innocent people including young girls and old men, is apparently perfectly fine. Apparently the deaths of innocent Arabs is less important than the careers of a few trigger happy Marines.

The U.S didn’t apologise for the dead children, or the innocent people they have mutilated over the past five years, or the disabled people they’d shot for no reason. Instead, they chose to go on the defensive, and do what America does best; blame someone else:

We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security

What this actually means is:

We strongly condemn anyone who tries to stand in our way of establishing ourselves as the moral authority of the World, regardless of how evil the means are to achieving that end. We blame Castro.

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, instead of apologising and begging for forgiveness for the atrocities committed by her pathetic excuse for a Country, simply said:

I ask the Secretary of Defence to launch a major investigation and bring the individual or individuals responsible for this to account.

Even in the midst of evidence that their Country is a vile terrorist Nation, the US officials cannot bring themselves around to admitting just how fucking awful they actually are. She is suggesting, indirectly, that leaking important information surrounding cover ups and murders is punishable by criminal charges, yet overseeing, directing and participating in the deaths of hundreds of innocents and the mutilation of hundreds more, is perfectly okay. America never fails to amaze me.

It isn’t surprising. The details are nothing surprising. It is simply a matter of “we told you so”. Those of us who are a little skeptical of everything the U.S tells us, know that the massacre in Fallujah“in 2003 was not going to be an isolated incident. We know that the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have very little to do with protecting the American or British people, and very much to do with securing oil supplies and enriching Arms Companies and Defence contractors. War is a private business now. We know that. So in that respect, the leak does not show us anything we didn’t already know. What it does do however, is show conclusively that the U.S is not the special force for good it attempts to paint itself as, by highlighting individual cases of abuses. These are important documents. Documents that governments like to cover up and claim that releasing them would be a matter of National Security, rather than the fact that they don’t want to embarrass themselves, and maybe face criminal charges. What it shows is that the U.S and Coalition forces have embarked on another Vietnam; an unwinnable war that threatens to get worse, after almost a decade of destruction. Thousands dead. Thousands more mutilated and without homes. An increase of a threat from extremists who now justifiably hate the U.S and allies beyond recognition. And no date for handover or withdrawal. A complete failure. And as the Guardian’s editorial puts it, the war effort and the U.S showed”:

A casual disregard for the lives of innocents. A bus that fails to slow for a foot patrol is raked with gunfire, killing four passengers and wounding 11 others. The documents tell how, in going after a foreign fighter, a special forces unit ended up with seven dead children. The infants were not their immediate priority. A report marked ‘Noforn’ (not for foreign elements of the coalition) suggests their main concern was to conceal the mobile rocket system that had just been used.

Wikileaks is not the enemy in this. Wikileaks has simply done what the Pentagon refuses to do, because it is hugely embarrassing to itself, and its delusions of grandeur. Wikileaks, and whomever leaked the information, should be knighted.

Hopefully, this will get the peace activists out and applying as much pressure as possible on the U.S and coalition forces, to withdraw as soon as possible. Maybe right winged Americans will accept that spending their taxes on a decent healthcare system is a far more justifiable way of using it, than on a war that has left thousands dead for absolutely no reason. Perhaps paying Lockheed Martin, the weapons manufacturer $65mn a day, every day of the year, from the US Treasury isn’t the right way to go about obtaining peace. Maybe accepting that the U.S military machine, and the private defence contractors that benefit from war, are the root of the problem. Hopefully the term “war crimes” will be used, because I’m pretty certain that if an Afghani man shot a deaf American in the middle of New York City, after scaring him and then yelling stop, before shooting him; he wouldn’t get away so lightly.