Aid and Comfort to Egypt's Army

Twin demonstrations yesterday rocked Cairo, with "hundreds of thousands" in Tahrir square demanding the accelerated prosecutions of the Mubarak regime and an accelerated transition to non-dictatorial government. In the night afterward, the military responded with a raid on Tahrir square protesters. Shocking, but not surprising response from the Egyptian military, which had accepted the ouster of Mubarak in February on the premise that any overt support for the strongman and his corrupt dealings would cause a mutiny among the ranks of the conscript army. While the military leadership current enjoys the naked power of running the 'transitional' government, it has never been clear that its interests have lain in liberalizing the Egyptian political scene.

Upon the international stage, the Egyptian army has claimed that its continued primacy in the Egyptian government is important for regional security. There is an implicit threat that if Egypt's military is forced to hand over control of the country in a truly democratic fashion, the country will suddenly return to animosity with Israel. War will break out in the Sinai and in the Mediterranean Sea if the heroic, patient, and mature Egyptian army is removed from power. Apologists for the Egyptian army exist in the U.S. national security apparatus, sporting reductionist foreign policy theories. In particular, the fear that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood will ascend to power forces many analysts to take the side of the army even if against the people.

The article on clashes between military and protesters demonstrates how little we should believe the Egyptian army.<--more--> At the same time as hundreds of thousands of protesters massed in Tahrir square to demand a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people, perhaps 1,000 people marched on the Israeli embassy in response to the retaliatory bombings of Palestinian militants who were firing rockets into Israel.

The Muslim Brotherhood, it is noted in the article, were responsible for the most of the attendance of the protest at the Israeli embassy. Those demands are wildly out of step with the demands of the hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir square who demonstrated yesterday for the fulfillment of the promise of rule of law in the country. Even though bombings are highly salient, more newsworthy, and a clearer issue, the 100's-to-1 majority of protestors on the street were both more concerned about becoming more like the West's free and open societies and not mobilized by the Muslim Brotherhood.

There is certainly a belief in Islamaphobic circles that any popular movement in the Muslim world is a threat to regional stability and American economic, political, and military power. These beliefs are reinforced by the sloppy reporting in the Times article which creates a false sense of equivalence between the broad-based protests for political freedoms in Tahrir and an isolated and small demonstration calling for a rupture in Egyptian-Israeli relations at the Israeli Embassy. Both happened on Friday in Cairo, and the military was the target of both protests, but that is where the similarities end.

American, Israeli, and Egyptian national interests all dictate that we work towards a stable, democratic Egypt in which the government is accountable to its citizens. That's also not a bad goal for America and Israel right about now.

9th Circuit Accepts Foreign Friends

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday announced that it would consider amici briefs filed by foreign governments related to Arizona's SB-1070. Politico reports that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer attacks the court for forfeiting American sovereignty.

“As do many citizens, I find it incredibly offensive that these foreign governments are using our court system to meddle in a domestic legal dispute and to oppose the rule of law,” the Republican governor said in a statement shortly after the state’s motion was filed Tuesday evening.

“What’s even more offensive is that this effort has been supported by the U.S. Department of Justice. American sovereignty begins in the U.S. Constitution and at the border,” she added. “I am confident the 9th Circuit will do the right thing and recognize foreign interference in U.S. legal proceedings and allow the State of Arizona to respond to their brief.”

Let's get this straight- the Ninth Circuit is deciding this case under the laws of the United States. The dispute is between the federal government and a state government. It affects foreign governments, as their citizens as legal residents of these nations, are being subjected to a discriminatory law. Mexico's brief cites potential problems in enforcing drug trafficking laws that would arise form SB 1070. Tell me exactly how considering the effects of a court decision on trade partners and neighboring countries violates U.S. sovereignty. Is that materially different from a court looking to the effects of a decision on prospective petitioners?

This is exactly why the Ninth Circuit accepts these briefs. the enactment of SB 1070 would likely bring foreign governments into the courts as plaintiffs in defense of their citizens. Does Jan Brewer think that when a foreign government submits to the judgment of an American court that it damages American sovereignty? It does precisely the opposite.

Politico whiffs on this issue pretty hard:

Brewer’s motion should resonate among conservative legal scholars worried about giving foreign legal systems a voice in American jurisprudence. These concerns are a reaction to a school of legal thought arguing that American judges should look to foreign laws and courts for assistance in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, particularly in regard to basic human rights issues. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is arguably the leading spokesperson for this approach, as noted in a 2005 New Yorker profile.

Really, this has nothing to do with whether American judges can reasonably incorporate principles from foreign courts in deciding cases under American law. That is a valid debate about the nature of the common law system in a globalized era. The issue here is whether we think foreign governments are likely to be affected by our courts and whether we would prefer that they enter the process as amici curiae or as plaintiffs. Eleventh Amendment constitutional immunity precludes the possibility that a foreign government can sue a state, but that does not prevent it from fully supporting the litigation of one of its citizens injured by Arizona's laws.

The Supreme Court automatically accepts amicus briefs from sovereigns under its rule 37.4, but when the rule was drafted, there had been very few amicus briefs filed by foreign governments. They were not included in the rule. However, the Court does selectively accept amicus curiae arguments from foreign governments. One researcher says that SCOTUS almost always does.

Viruses Doing Bidding of American Foreign Policy

Following on the heels of a week of Stuxnet news, we have an interesting story coming out of Afghanistan.  Apparently, a blight has halved the productivity of opium poppies in some of the main growing regions. Afghanistan grows roughly 90% of teh world's opium poppies.

Crop eradication has long been a goal of the UN Office of Drug and Crime as well as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. is known to have pursued research of biological agents to kill drug crops in South America and Central Asia.  There is no indication that this virus limiting opium yield from an acreage of poppies was engineered or designed intentionally, but this possibility warrants serious investigation.

The control of the opium trade has long provided a financial support and cause for violence in opium producing regions from Afghanistan to the Golden Triangle.  The Taliban as well as unaffiliated warlords finance their armies by processing the opium and transporting it to Pakistan to be processed into heroin and shipped internationally.  An additional northern route of distribution is expanding, with the initial processing taking place in Afghanistan and passing through central Caucus states and into Russia, a growing market for narcotics.  The US government has an obvious stake in limiting the number of growers and the profitability of growing poppies.