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The Washington Post reports: “Liberal groups urge Biden not to name Flournoy as secretary of defense.”

One of the groups, RootsAction, released a statement: “Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams Go Public with Strong Opposition to Michele Flournoy As Secretary of Defense.”

JODY WILLIAMS, jwilliams@nobelwomensinitiative.org, @jodywilliams97
Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She is currently chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

She said: “If President-elect Biden really has a progressive agenda in mind for his administration, he should appoint members of his cabinet and other high-level positions who demonstrate progressive thinking and do not move this fractured country backwards. Nominating Michèle Flournoy for Defense Secretary would not be forward thinking. We do not need a hawk with relationships with the weapons industry.”

PAT ALVISO, mfsooc@earthlink.net, https://twitter.com/mfso_us
Alviso is national coordinator of Military Families Speak Out. She said today: “The appointment of Michèle Flournoy as Secretary of Defense would be both wrong-headed and a huge setback for our troops and military families. After disastrous policies that have caused almost 20 years of death and untold suffering in a war that never should have happened in the first place, we deserve better. Flournoy pushed for the surge in Afghanistan and believes that we need to leave a residual force in Afghanistan. Why? If thousands of U.S. troops couldn’t accomplish our ever-changing mission, what good could possibly come out of leaving a small force there? Flournoy and the think tank she co-founded (the Center for a New American Security) promise more of the same — military solutions for conflict. If Biden truly cares about military families, as he has professed, then he should surround himself with the voices of those who value diplomacy over military force and find ways to bring all of our troops home now.”

See also: “Statement Opposing Michele Flournoy as Defense Secretary.”

A leading contender to be nominated by Joe Biden for Defense Secretary, Michèle Flournoy is facing opposition for her hawkish record and financial entanglements with the weapons industry.

MARCY WINOGRAD, winogradteach@gmail.com, @marcywinograd
As a Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Winograd wrote “Open Letter to Biden: Hire New Foreign Policy Advisors,” which was signed by more than 450 delegates.

Winograd said this week: “Progressives may be tempted to trade truth for access to the powerful and privileged, thinking they can influence the course of events if they bite their tongue when Flournoy talks of fighting and prevailing in a war with China. But this sort of thinking is misguided. The power progressives hold must be wielded now before it’s too late, before Flournoy is crowned and the U.S. slips further into decline, mired in a high-stakes high-tech arms race — or worse, another endless war, this one with a nuclear-armed nation of over 1.3 billion people.”

The quote from Winograd appeared in the article “Some Liberals and Arms-Control Experts Are Cheering for War Profiteers to Be in Biden’s Cabinet,” written by Institute for Public Accuracy executive director Norman Solomon.

On Monday, five progressive organizations — CodePink, Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction.org and World Beyond War — released a statement opposing Flournoy as Defense Secretary. “The people of the United States need a Secretary of Defense who is untethered to the weapons industry and committed to ending the arms race,” the statement said. “Michèle Flournoy should not be put in charge of the Pentagon, and neither should anyone else failing to meet those qualifications. We are opposed to her being nominated, and we are prepared to launch a major nationwide grassroots campaign so that every senator will hear from large numbers of constituents demanding that she not be confirmed.”

Two weeks ago, the Project On Government Oversight issued an in-depth report, “Should Michèle Flournoy Be Secretary of Defense?”

Joe Biden has reportedly selected retired general Lloyd Austin III as his nominee to head the Pentagon. Michèle Flournoy had been the reported favorite for the position before her hawkishness and ties to weapons makers drew criticism.

MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net
Hoh wrote “Biden’s Moral Hazard” in November regarding the malfeasance inherent in Biden’s national security picks. He is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a Marine Corps combat veteran of the Iraq War, and is a 100 percent disabled veteran. In 2009, he resigned his State Department position in Afghanistan in response to the escalation of that war.

He said today: “Other than a difference in identity, there is not a real difference between Austin and Flournoy. Perhaps Flournoy would have been more ideological and more keen on proving her ideas and concepts of war correct, ideas and concepts formed without ever knowing the reality of war. However, Austin’s 41 years of military service do not seem to have imparted on him the wisdom of the folly, destruction and immorality of war.

“Austin was integral in the disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as well as the escalation of the vicious, illegal and counter-productive drone wars. His greatest achievement seems to have been overseeing the U.S. retreat from Iraq. Like too many in Washington, D.C., Austin quickly exposed the phony charade of public service by trading in his decades of time in uniform for a high-paying directorship with Raytheon, a stake in a military industry investment firm, and the establishment of his own consultancy whose clients are undoubtedly weapons companies.

“Biden’s pick of Austin is symptomatic of an American political system that values symbol over substance, utilizes rhetoric to cover corruption, and ignores the brutal truth of reality in favor of platitude and hagiography.

“Austin is a good pick for the American Empire, the weapons industry and the bloodthirsty foreign policy elite of the Democratic Party. Tens of millions of people in the Muslim world will continue to suffer cruelly through America’s unending wars, while U.S. taxpayers hemorrhage trillions of dollars to the war industry. Meanwhile, the true dangers to the American people: Covid, climate change, racial injustice, economic inequality, et al., continue to go unaddressed.”

MARIAMNE EVERETT, [in France], mariamne.everett@mycit.ie, @EverettMariamne
Everett wrote the piece “Biden: A War Cabinet?” just before the election. She is an intern at the Institute for Public Accuracy and radio presenter with World Radio Paris where she hosts the podcast “Hidden Paris.” She noted today about Austin:

JEHAN HAKIM, yemenialliancecommittee@gmail.com, @jehan_hakim
AP is reporting in “Biden Facing Growing Pressure over Secretary of Defense pick,” that: “A coalition of at least seven progressive groups warned Biden to avoid [Michèle] Flournoy in an open letter to Biden obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press that referenced her record of ‘ill-advised policy decisions’ — particularly in relation to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan — and an ‘opaque history of private-sector activity.’

“‘Ms. Flournoy’s consistent support for military interventions has contributed to devastating crises around the world, including in Yemen,’ said Jehan Hakim, chairperson of the Yemeni Alliance Committee, which helped organize the letter.”

See: “Statement Opposing Michele Flournoy as Defense Secretary” — which includes other links and resources as well.

Also see the Yemeni Alliance Committee’s resource page: “World Says no to War on Yemen: Global Day of Action” on January 25.

See from Mariamne Everett: “Biden: A War Cabinet?” and “Biden Must End the War He Helped Start: Yemenis call on the president-elect to stop the onslaught” by Shireen Al-Adeimi.

DANNY SJURSEN, dannysjursen@hotmail.com, @SkepticalVet

Retired U.S. Army major, contributing editor at antiwar.com, and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, Sjursen recently wrote the piece “What President Biden Won’t Touch: Foreign Policy, Sacred Cows, and the U.S. Military” which notes:

• Jake Sullivan, expected to be National Security Advisor, is with “the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (‘peace,’ in this case, being funded by ten military agencies and [weapons] contractors) and Macro Advisory Partners, a strategic consultancy run by former British spy chiefs.”

• “Avril Haines, a top contender for CIA director or director of national intelligence: CNAS [Center for a New American Security and] the Brookings Institution; WestExec [see below]; and Palantir Technologies, a controversial, CIA-seeded, NSA-linked data-mining firm.”

MARIAMNE EVERETT, [in France], mariamne.everett@mycit.ie, @EverettMariamne
Everett recently wrote the piece “Biden: A War Cabinet?” She is an intern at the Institute for Public Accuracy and radio presenter with World Radio Paris where she hosts the podcast “Hidden Paris.”

She wrote earlier this month: “It is extremely important to note that Flournoy and Blinken co-founded the strategic consulting firm, WestExec Advisors, where the two use their large database of governmental, military, venture capitalist and corporate leader contacts to help companies win big Pentagon contracts. One such client is Jigsaw, a technology incubator created by Google that describes itself on its website as ‘a unit within Google that forecasts and confronts emerging threats, creating future-defining research and technology to keep our world safer.’ Their partnership on the AI initiative entitled Project Maven led to a rebellion by Google workers who opposed their technology being used by military and police operations.

“Furthermore, Flournoy and Blinken, in their jobs at WestExec Advisors, co-chaired the biannual meeting of the liberal organization Foreign Policy for America. Over 50 representatives of national-security groups were in attendance. Most of the attendees supported ‘ask(ing) Congress to halt U.S. military involvement in the (Yemen) conflict.’ Flournoy did not. She said that the weapons should be sold under certain conditions and that Saudi Arabia needed these advanced Patriot missiles to defend itself.” See latest Politico piece on WestExec: “The secretive consulting firm that’s become Biden’s Cabinet in waiting.”

STEPHEN ZUNES, zunes@usfca.edu
Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and was just on an accuracy.org news release: “Tony Blinken: Iraq War Propagandist?” He said today: “As an effort to undermine anti-war Democrats and promote Bush’s plans to invade Iraq, Flournoy claimed that the U.S. needed to ‘strike preemptively before a crisis erupts to destroy an adversary’s weapons stockpile’ before it “could erect defenses to protect those weapons, or simply disperse them.” That Iraq had long since rid itself of such weapons was no matter to her. The oil would still be there. Iraq’s strategic position at the head of the Persian Gulf bordering other oil-rich nations — Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia — was still there.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola
Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola recently wrote the piece “Biden’s transition team is filled with war profiteers, Beltway chickenhawks, and corporate consultants” for The Grayzone. See his latest Twitter thread on the most recent appointments.

Korea specialist Tim Shorrock tweeted: “Tony Blinken in 2018 sounding more hawkish on North Korea than John Bolton and, like Bolton, completely dissing South Korean President Moon Jae-in as a dupe of Kim Jong Un. These are the kinds of comments feared by Moon’s people and Korean progressives.”

ADRIENNE PINE, pine@american.edu, @adriennepine
Pine is associate professor of anthropology at American University and co-editor of the just-published book Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry.

She just wrote the piece “More Humane Cages? Prospects for Immigration Justice Under Biden Appear Dim,” which scrutinizes new Biden appointees including “Obama’s former top immigration adviser Cecilia Muñoz to [Biden’s] transition team, who brushed off NPR interviewer Maria Hinojosa’s question about family separation, responding that ‘Some of these things are going to happen.’

“While much has been made of the gendered diversity of Biden’s transition team (including Muñoz) and potential cabinet picks, it will be little comfort to the women of Central America, or any other region subject to U.S. interference, to know that the new U.S. #GirlBosses may include Susan Rice as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton as UN ambassador, or Michele Flournoy as Secretary of Defense. [See “Biden: A War Cabinet?“]

“Many of Biden’s DHS transition team selections show his platform will differ (if at all) only in form, not in substance, from that of Trump. None of his team members hail from the ranks of BIPOC [black, Indigenous and people of color] organizers who delivered him his victories in key states like Arizona, and for whom immigration is a major issue. …

“Biden’s DHS transition team members range from billionaire-funded think tank pundits to corporate lawyers, with a smattering of left-liberal ACLU types, none of whom fundamentally question the overarching logic of border security. Take Blas Nuñez-Neto, for example, DHS transition team member and RAND analyst who accuses migrants of ‘taking advantage of incentives created by the U.S. asylum process’ and has advocated that asylum seekers be made to seek asylum from U.S. embassies while still living in their countries (a non-starter for people fleeing deadly violence) and building more private prisons to detain entire families indefinitely, as humane alternatives to family separation.”

MARIAMNE EVERETT,  [in France] mariamne.everett@mycit.ie, @EverettMariamne
Everett recently wrote the piece “Biden: A War Cabinet?” She is an intern at the Institute for Public Accuracy and radio presenter with World Radio Paris where she hosts the podcast Hidden Paris, about the hidden cultural and social aspects and places of the City of Lights.

Her piece notes the record of Susan Rice, expected by many to be Secretary of State in a Biden administration. Among Rice’s quotes noted: “I think he [then Secretary of State Colin Powell] has proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them, and I don’t think many informed people doubted that.” (NPR, Feb. 6, 2003)

“It’s clear that Iraq poses a major threat. It’s clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that’s the path we’re on. I think the question becomes whether we can keep the diplomatic balls in the air and not drop any, even as we move forward, as we must, on the military side.” (NPR, Dec. 20, 2002) [NPR declined to provide IPA with audio of these segments, we encourage media outlets to request them from library@npr.org.]

Also examined is Tony Blinken, thought to be a likely National Security Adviser. Everett writes: “Blinken had immense influence over Biden in his role as Deputy National Security Advisor, helping formulate Biden’s approach and support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. … Blinken also appears to be steering Biden’s pro-Israel agenda, recently stating that Biden ‘would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes, period, full stop.'”

Michèle Flournoy is a leading possibility to head the Pentagon. She was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 to 2012 in the Obama administration under Secretaries Robert Gates [a hold-over from the George W. Bush administration] and Leon Panetta. Writes Everett: “Flournoy … paved the way for the U.S.’s endless and costly wars which prevent us from investing in life-saving and necessary programs like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.”

Everett adds: “It is extremely important to note that Flournoy and Blinken co-founded the strategic consulting firm, WestExec Advisors, where the two use their large database of governmental, military, venture capitalist and corporate leader contacts to help companies win big Pentagon contracts. One such client is Jigsaw, a technology incubator created by Google that describes itself on its website as ‘a unit within Google that forecasts and confronts emerging threats, creating future-defining research and technology to keep our world safer.’ Their partnership on the AI initiative entitled Project Maven led to a rebellion by Google workers who opposed their technology being used by military and police operations.”

The New York Times has had a pair of stories in recent days on the Center for American Progress: “Bernie Sanders Accuses Liberal Think Tank of Smearing Progressive Candidates” and “The Rematch: Bernie Sanders vs. a Clinton Loyalist,” which states: “The Center for American Progress and its sister political arm, with a $60 million combined annual budget and 320 staff members, have played an outsize role in the Democratic Party for nearly two decades. Founded in 2003 by top advisers to Bill and Hillary Clinton, the organization has sought to rebrand itself as a brain trust for the anti-Trump resistance.

“Its donor rolls overlap substantially with those of the Clintons’ campaigns and foundation. The think tank has taken in millions from interests often criticized by liberals, including Wall Street financiers, big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense contractors and the health care industry. Individual donors can ask to remain anonymous. …

“From 2016 through last year, the center accepted nearly $2.5 million from the United Arab Emirates to fund its National Security and International Policy initiative, according to previously unreported internal budget documents. …

“Internal criticism of the Emirati donations leaked into the news media, prompting an in-house investigation that led to the firing of two staff members. One of them, Ken Gude, a longtime executive, is working with a lawyer on a wrongful dismissal lawsuit.

“In November 2015, after Ms. Tanden invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to a question-and-answer session at the center, a dozen staff members stood during an all-staff meeting and read a statement of protest. ‘Our goal is to promote humanity and shut down oppression and genocide and terrorism. Bringing in another head of state with a record of oppression would further push our mission away,’ it read in part.

“In an email Ms. Tanden sent on the day of the Netanyahu visit … released by WikiLeaks, she told the think tank’s founder, John D. Podesta, that the ‘far left hates me’ for hosting Mr. Netanyahu, but the invitation ‘may have sealed the deal with a new board member.’ Ms. Tanden was wooing Mr. [Jonathan] Lavine, a pro-Israel philanthropist.”

ZAID JILANI, [in D.C.] areo64 at gmail.com, @ZaidJilani
Jilani writes about political polarization for UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center and co-hosts “Extremely Offline,” a podcast “about better conversations between political tribes.” Jilani is blogging on the 2020 election at 2020watch.org.

He used to work at CAP and just wrote the piece “Constructive criticism of the Center for American Progress has helped make it more transparent and responsive over time” which states: “While I worked at the institution from 2009-2012, most of its donors were kept secret. However, following investigations by journalist Ken Silverstein, the think tank decided to disclose most of its donors.

“Similarly, I wrote several articles based off of presumably hacked and leaked emails from the inbox of the Ambassador from the United Arab Emirates that showed that the UAE was both financing CAP and using its senior staff to lobby the Trump administration and influence Washington policy. After a series of articles noting these ties, CAP eventually decided to end its financial relationship with the UAE, as was reported earlier this year.”

See piece by Silverstein from 2013 for The Nation: “The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks.”

RICK STERLING, rsterling1 [at] gmail.com
Sterling is an independent investigative journalist who just wrote the piece “Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War” for ConsortiumNews.com — which states: “On Feb. 7, Amnesty International released a new report titled ‘Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison,’ which accuses the Syrian government of executing thousands of political prisoners, a set of accusations that has received uncritical treatment in the mainstream news media.

“Like the Iraq/Kuwait incubator story and the Libyan ‘mercenary’ story, the ‘Human Slaughterhouse’ report is coming at a critical time. It accuses and convicts the Syrian government of horrible atrocities against civilians — and AI explicitly calls for the international community to take ‘action.’ But the AI report is deeply biased and amounts to a kangaroo-court conviction of the Syrian government. …

“The Amnesty International report violates the organization’s own research standards. As documented by Professor Tim Hayward here, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, claims that Amnesty does its research ‘in a very systematic, primary, way where we collect evidence with our own staff on the ground. And every aspect of our data collection is based on corroboration and cross-checking from all parties, even if there are, you know, many parties in any situation because of all of the issues we deal with are quite contested. So it’s very important to get different points of view and constantly cross check and verify the facts.’

“But the Amnesty report fails on all counts: it relies on third parties, it did not gather its information from different points of view, and it did not cross-check with all parties. The report’s conclusions are not based on primary sources, material evidence or AI’s own staff; the findings are solely based on the claims of anonymous individuals, mostly in southern Turkey from where the war on Syria is coordinated. …

“While the Amnesty report makes many accusations against the Syrian government, AI ignores the violation of Syrian sovereignty being committed by Western and Gulf countries. It is a curious fact that big NGOs such as Amnesty International focus on violations of ‘human rights law’ and ‘humanitarian law’ but ignore the crime of aggression, also called the crime against peace. …

“The co-author of this Amnesty International report is Nicolette Waldman (Boehland), who was uncritically interviewed on ‘Democracy Now’ on Feb. 9. The background and previous work of Waldman shows the inter-connections between influential Washington ‘think tanks’ and the billionaires’ foundations that fund ‘non-governmental organizations’ — NGOs — that claim to be independent but are clearly not.

“Waldman previously worked for the ‘Center for Civilians in Conflict,’ which is directed by leaders from George Soros’s Open Society, the Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, Blackrock Solutions and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

“CNAS may be the most significant indication of political orientation since it is led by Michele Flournoy, who was expected to become Secretary of Defense if Hillary Clinton had won the election. CNAS has been a leading force behind neoconservative and liberal-interventionist plans to escalate the war in Syria.”

See response to Amnesty International from Syrian dissident Nizar Nayouf — posted on As’ad AbuKhalil’s “Angry Arab” blog.

See on-the-ground journalist’s Patrick Cockburn’s recent piece on misreporting on Syria and Iraq in the London Review of Books: “Who supplies the news?”

See: Ian Sinclair’s new piece “Why Is the Media Ignoring Leaked U.S. Government Documents About Syria?” from AlterNet: “In summary, the leaked information wholly contradicts the popular picture of Western benevolent intentions let down by President Obama’s ineffective leadership and inaction. Instead the evidence shows the U.S. has been sending an ‘extraordinary amount’ of weapons to the armed insurgents in Syria … They did this understanding that sending in weapons would escalate the fighting and not ‘end well for Syrians.’ Furthermore, the U.S. has long known that its regional ally Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been supporting extremists in Syria. And, most shocking of all if true, both Kerry and the DIA report seem to show the U.S. allowed forerunners to ISIL and/or ISIL itself to expand and threaten the Syrian Government as this corresponded with the US’s geo-strategic objectives.”

See James Peck — author of Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights — on 2011 Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “Libya and Syria: Humanitarian War is a ‘Monstrous Illusion.’“

GARETH PORTER,
porter.gareth50[at]gmail.com,
@GarethPorter
An investigative journalist and author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, Porter just wrote the piece, “Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks” for Consortium News, which states: “As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria.

“The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy.)

“Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for ‘limited military strikes’ against the Assad regime.

“And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air strikes to help ‘moderate’ groups against President Bashar al-Assad. (When Panetta gave a belligerent speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he was interrupted by chants from the delegates on the floor of ‘no more war!’ …

“It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for figures known to be close to a presidential candidate to make public recommendations for new and broader war abroad. The fact that such explicit plans for military strikes against the Assad regime were aired so openly soon after Clinton had clinched the Democratic nomination suggests that Clinton had encouraged Flournoy and Panetta to do so.

“The rationale for doing so is evidently not to strengthen her public support at home but to shape the policy decisions made by the Obama administration and the coalition of external supporters of the armed opposition to Assad.

“Obama’s refusal to threaten to use military force on behalf of the anti-Assad forces or to step up military assistance to them has provoked a series of leaks to the news media by unnamed officials – primarily from the Defense Department – criticizing Obama’s willingness to cooperate with Russia in seeking a Syrian ceasefire and political settlement as ‘naïve.’

“The news of Clinton’s advisers calling openly for military measures signals to those critics in the administration to continue to push for a more aggressive policy on the premise that she will do just that as president.”