Next month, Americans will decide which major political party will assume executive powers. For many liberals and progressives, the choice couldn’t be clearer: we have an ethical obligation to vote for Hillary Clinton if for no other reason than to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. Although this line of thinking isn’t unreasonable, the burgeoning support for Clinton and the Democrats and the incessant ridicule of Trump and the Republicans run the risk of masking the moral rot at the core of both parties. A key example is their exploitation of LGBT rights for unethical ends.
Fear Trumps Reason
In August, Mr. Trump gave a speech in Ohio in which he continued to exploit popular fear of Islam and Muslims, calling for “extreme vetting” by way of a new “ideological screening test” designed to forbid the entry of those “who believe that shari’a law should supplant American law.” Much was said about the absurdities of Trump’s speech—the irony of wanting to keep out supporters of “bigotry and hatred,” the disturbing realization that his proposed “extreme vetting” is legally justifiable, and the unsettling fact that there is considerable historical precedent for vesting the executive branch with such vetting power. Equally significant but less frequently discussed is the extent to which Trump’s talk manipulates the fear that “radical Islam” will imperil, among other things, LGBT rights. As it turns out, this fear is being mobilized by both political parties.
The hollowness of Trump’s thinking can be seen in his singular emphasis on the threat of Islamist oppression of LGBT people spreading to our shores without any mention of the systemic—and far more grievous—homophobia in our own country. While ISIS has been throwing men who have sex with men off buildings, Trump has been courting right-wing evangelicals who sanction a form of therapy that drives many LGBT patients to suicide, and some 200 anti-LGBT bills have been introduced by legislatures in 34 states.
The hypocrisy of the Republicans is self-evident, but it also indexes an Orientalist tendency to portray Islam as a foreign demon that can divert attention from the moral failings of western societies. More importantly, it’s completely consistent with the habit both of self-professed European liberals and right-wing xenophobes to assume that violent crimes committed by brown Muslim men are grounded in bigotry endemic to their foreign culture, which has begun to contaminate a progressive, tolerant Europe (or, per Trump’s narrative, an essentially “tolerant American society”). As the Republican presidential nominee asserted in response to last month’s bombing in New York City, this toleration requires aggressive racial profiling. Yet, he insists, it is “they” who are going to oppress “us.” And if you want to protect women, gays, and non-Muslims in the US, you’d better vote red in November.
Hillary Clinton and the War on Terror
If Trump has exaggerated the threat Islamist homophobia poses to Americans, Mrs. Clinton has taken advantage of the June 12 attack on LGBT people in Orlando—which was partly motivated by Islamist ideology—to further legitimize the disastrous ‘war on terror.’ Before exploring how she has done this, however, we should scrutinize her overarching approach to the prosecution of this unbounded war.
Clinton’s progressive critics correctly describe her as a hawk who upholds the doctrine of American exceptionalism and global dominance while remaining far too closely connected with the military-industrial complex (whose business interests she helps secure). Crucially, her record and candidacy represent a continuation and expansion of the war on terror initiated by George W. Bush and perpetuated by President Obama. Indeed, she has dedicated herself to preserving vital components of this boundless war. These include increasing domestic surveillance, lengthening terrorist watch lists (which disproportionately target American Muslims already facing the highest rate of hate crimes since 9/11), and advocating punishment for national security whistleblowers like Edward Snowden (whose exposure of NSA spying she falsely characterized as something he could have done—but chose not to do—legally).
It entails, too, prolonging the Obama administration’s non-transparent, legally dubious, and murderous drone program over which Clinton presided as Secretary of State and which remains subject to limited congressional oversight. And although US special operation forces have already been positioned in close to 70% of the world’s countries over the past decade, Clinton aims to deploy an even larger number of Green Berets than Obama did.
The War on Terror in Libya and Syria
That Clinton hopes to be a more interventionist commander in chief than Obama should come as no surprise. After all, she ignored the lessons of Iraq, pushing so zealously for forcible regime change in Libya that top Pentagon officials felt compelled to pursue their own separate diplomatic negotiations with Tripoli. Even former Defense Secretary Robert Gates—who had joined hands with Clinton in demanding a major troop surge in Afghanistan in 2009—expressed reservations about starting yet another war. Libya is now a seething hotbed of violent extremism.
Another devastating outcome of the intervention in Libya is that militants managed to seize Muammar Qaddafi’s stockpile of arms and sell them to Syrian rebels. These weapons have, in turn, strengthened criminal networks throughout the Sahel, accelerated the destabilization of Mali, and made it into the hands of Syrian opposition fighters linked to extremist organizations like al-Qaeda. Working in tandem with then-CIA director David Petraeus in 2012, Clinton also pressed the White House to equip vetted anti-Assad Syrian rebels with arms. Obama rejected this proposal because of the high risk of weapons getting into the wrong hands and becoming embroiled in interminable war. (The most Obama was willing to accept at the time was a classified arrangement whereby regional allies gave weapons to the Syrian opposition with CIA assistance, even though the intelligence agency eventually admitted that America’s covertly arming and training foreign rebel outfits rarely works).
But since the president later agreed to a more robust, gradually intensified program for arming opposition fighters—closer to Clinton and Petraeus’ proposal and with the aim of pressuring Assad to give up on achieving a military victory—Syria has only witnessed more confusion and chaos. In 2015, the US government trained just 60 rebels, but spent roughly $4 million per fighter. Pentagon-trained fighters reportedly turned on their American patrons, distributing their weapons to the hitherto al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra (now called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham). Even through the end of August, Syrian militias armed by the Pentagon were still clashing with CIA-backed militiamen, frustrating efforts to topple Assad’s government or defeat ISIS.
Meanwhile, weapons have still been pouring into Syria from the mess that is Libya, and weapons which the CIA handed to Syrian rebels are now circulating in the black arms market. If history is any guide, then the US is likely setting the stage for a development analogous to the transformation of the Afghan mujahideen into al-Qaeda. What has been vindicated by these unpleasant facts is not the gadarene rush to intervention that Clinton and Petraeus advocated, but Obama’s worry that extremist organizations would end up acquiring US-provided weapons and thus further mire the region in conflict.
In this cauldron of endless violence—the origins of which can be traced to the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq led by Bush and endorsed by Clinton—the monstrosity known as ISIS has metastasized. In the past three years, it has inspired attacks from Florida to Bavaria, using the colossal proxy war in Syria to challenge Assad’s Shia Alawite regime and to realize its vision of a caliphate. Several of the United States’ regional partners have been financing the most merciless elements of Syrian society, including the so-called Islamic State. To fund and arm anti-Assad rebels, Washington has made use of its precious Gulf allies, at once ignoring the role they’ve played in disseminating ISIS’ brand of jihadi theology and failing to restrain them.
For all of these reasons, it’s very difficult to see how the type of militarism embraced by Clinton has improved the situation in Syria, where almost 500,000 people have been killed and millions have become refugees.
Gay Rights and the Specter of “Radical Jihadism”
What does all of this have to do with LGBT rights? After the Orlando shooting in June, Clinton depicted its “radical jihadist[]” perpetrator as consumed not just by hatred of LGBT Americans, but of pluralism itself. For he was inspired by ISIS, which brutalizes minorities and “execut[es] LGBT people.” Clinton said we must “attack” ISIS’ ideology with “pride in our country” and faith in her plan to “defeat ISIS and the other radical jihadist groups in the region and beyond,” which is just another way to propagandize for the global war on terror.
Although she intends to defeat jihadism militarily across the world, she focused on ISIS’ Levantine stronghold, where she seeks to “ramp[] up the air campaign.” We ought, however, to oppose Clinton’s suggested course of action. We should also interpret her post-Orlando commentary on ISIS and gay rights as an attempt to conceal nakedly self-interested strategic considerations under a veneer of modern liberal values—a maneuver that has typified American foreign policy for more than half a century.
Why American and Allied Airstrikes Are Morally Suspect in General
In providing Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars worth of arms (including deals made by Clinton’s State Department) and in supplying the monarchy with white phosphorus, we’ve enabled Riyadh’s slaughter of Yemeni civilians and may therefore be complicit in war crimes. Similarly, airstrikes carried out by a NATO ally, Turkey, killed at least 35 civilians in the last week of August. Some of them lost their lives as Ankara struck fighters belonging to the US-supported, Kurdish-majority alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Whether directly supporting or indirectly assisting countries who kill innocents from the air, we have blood on our hands.
Moreover, ongoing air-delivered American ordnance in places like Afghanistan and Libya has only exacerbated those countries’ civil wars. For example, even though Obama pledged in 2014 to end the United States’ combat mission in Afghanistan, his administration has still escalated conflict, ordering soldiers to fight for control of parts of the country and continuing an air campaign which has killed enough civilians to gravely concern the UN. In fact, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), US airstrikes are now killing civilians at the highest level recorded since 2008 (with at least another 15 civilian deaths reported at the end of September).
It’s not even clear that augmenting the number of airstrikes has decreased insurgent attacks. Afghanistan’s largest news channel recently published a report which demonstrates a positive correlation between American airstrikes and insurgent attacks from June to July 2016. In spite of the Democrats’ vigorous advancement of the war on terror, terrorism has only been steadily increasing since 2011. And whereas in 2002 the State Department counted only 15 foreign terrorist organizations promulgating Islamist and/or jihadist views, it counted nearly thrice as many such groups in 2016.
Worse still, American officials greatly understate airstrike civilian deaths and have failed to seriously investigate allegations of such casualties. They’ve even gone as far as dismissing non-governmental tallies as propaganda whilst paying lip service to transparency by withholding information about the locations, dates, and the presence of persons with civilian status.
These same officials then proceed to frame airstrikes in the context of an unbridled war. For the jihadi insurgency extends from “Boston to the FATA,” presents a “persistent” and “chronic” threat, and is so uniquely evil that there need be “no limit” to how the US responds. As Clinton puts it, the United States must wage war over the “long haul” with the ultimate goal of destroying every trace of “global terrorism” using “every pillar of American power.” If she has her way, we may be raining fire from the skies of the Eastern Hemisphere for a long time to come.
Why We Should Question Airstrikes Against ISIS: The Duplicity of the State
It’s far from obvious that the American-led air raid on ISIS in Iraq and Syria is ethically sound. In 2014, the CIA estimated that ISIS had approximately 30,000 fighters. By November 2015, the Pentagon said they had killed about 23,000 fighters, and an additional 2,500 in December 2015. Yet in January 2016, Centcom (US Central Command)—with whom Clinton has traditionally had a close relationship—admitted that some 30,000 fighters still remain. In other words, the number of fighters didn’t change substantially; seventeenth months of air raids had essentially been ineffectual. Even in confirmed strikes, the Pentagon is very often unable to verify how many have been killed, unable to distinguish between combatants and children, and unable to differentiate between enemy fighters and local government troops.
It is true that ISIS has faced setbacks in the past few weeks, but these may prove illusory. The vanguard of jihadist extremism still maintains control over Raqqa and Mosul, and has carried out mass-casualty suicide bombings in both Iraq and Syria, most recently claiming responsibility for deadly attacks in territory heavily guarded by Syrian government forces. Little wonder, then, that CIA director John Brennan has acknowledged the ineffectiveness of American-led military force in impeding the group’s “capability and global reach,” expecting it to wreak havoc in the region for many “years to come.” In addition, ISIS has remained resilient by drawing on its “deep bench” of tacticians to replace assassinated leaders. Now that the great battle for Mosul has begun, we may be tempted to declare victory against the group too soon. But experts suggest that the United States’ plan to retake the city will only further fracture Iraq along sectarian lines and that, notwithstanding all appearances, ISIS may well enter a “dangerous new phase” of westward territorial expansion.
More notably, however, the air campaign spearheaded by a Democratic administration has cost a great many innocent lives. As analysts have shown, over the course of nearly two years of flying bombing sorties, American military planners have indicated their readiness to relax the rules of engagement which bind air attacks on ISIS—specifically by reducing the importance of protecting noncombatant lives in land ruled by the militant group and thereby raising the number of airstrike targets.
As it turns out, there is good evidence that military officials have loosened these regulations in practice despite their denials and in violation of their commitment to being “extraordinarily careful” in avoiding harm to noncombatants. Being extraordinarily careful apparently means knowing that oil tankers in ISIS-governed territory are being driven by civilian men and blowing them up anyway. Women and children haven’t been spared either. On July 19th, 2016, American-led coalition airstrikes killed at least 56 civilians, including 11 children, in a village called Tokhar near Manbij, Syria. Although the US military command initially stated that as few as 10 civilians were killed in Tokhar, both the Turkey-based Syrian Institute for Justice and local Syrian activists confirmed at least 73 civilian deaths.
Similarly, in July, Centcom counted only 36 coalition civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria since the summer of 2015. Yet the British-based monitor, Airwars, documented between 208 and 387 civilian deaths that month alone, up to a 250% increase in casualties from June. In late August, the organization contrasted its estimate of 1,500 coalition civilian deaths with the Pentagon’s public admission of only 55 since the beginning of the air campaign.
It isn’t just monitoring groups that dispute the American military’s statistics. Former members of the armed forces who helped coordinate airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have said that the government’s numbers are much lower than expected, confessing that they feel guilty because even targeted strikes have killed scores of civilians whose names and identities are erased. Some servicemembers have written directly to the president to denounce the government’s contorted accounts of the efficacy of airstrikes and their dehumanizing effects on victim and operator alike.
The Defense Department has been particularly dishonest about the success of airstrikes on ISIS. In August, a congressional panel found that Centcom had been doctoring intelligence reports to paint a rosier picture of American involvement in Iraq and Syria than “warranted by facts on the ground.” This distortion of reality was merely an extension of what one senior Centcom analyst described last year as the Defense Department’s attempt to downplay the inadequacy of airstrike operations against ISIS infrastructure.
Why We Should Question Airstrikes Against ISIS: Consequences Be Damned
If those directing military operations don’t care for honesty, they appear to care even less about long-term repercussions. For instance, since Manbij was too strategically valuable not to bomb 520 times, the US didn’t follow advice from the anti-ISIS, anti-Assad Syrian Opposition Coalition to suspend airstrikes after the Tokhar massacre so that greater civilian suffering might be forestalled and jihadist recruiters robbed of the chance to capitalize on anti-American sentiment. Nor did we pay heed to the comparably anti-ISIS, anti-Assad activist association, Al-Raqqa Tudhbih Bi-Samt (Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently), who cautioned that the killing of civilians in Manbij would merely swell the ranks of the jihadist enemy. Ironically, US Air Force officials agree with them, stressing that “[i]f you inadvertently … kill innocent men, women, and children, then there’s a backlash, so we might kill three and create 10 terrorists.”
What about the lawfulness of pinpointing ISIS targets in the countries where its adherents have staked territory? Even if an argument can be made for airstrikes in Iraq, the case for an aerial campaign against the group’s combatants in Syria is unpersuasive. Congress has not properly authorized these airstrikes, and the president can’t plausibly cite the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which only permits action against nations, organizations, or individuals who planned or assisted the September 11th attacks. Neither Syria nor its most powerful ally, Russia, meets this description. Furthermore, the US government lacks an explicit right to pursue military action in Syria based on the laws of war. It can neither invoke the use of force in self-defense nor claim to have received permission from the Syrian government for the application of such force. Unfortunately, in enthusiastically promoting an escalation of the air campaign against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, Clinton betrays her lack of regard for international law.
Obama, too, has been inconsistent in his management of the war against ISIS. His administrative officials first ruled out ground troops, but as of May 2016, the Pentagon had stationed 300 troops in Syria and more than 4,000 in Iraq (with another 600 on the way). The White House has also misleadingly intimated that launching more airstrikes on ISIS targets won’t require the presence of more ground troops. Clinton’s proposed establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria encounters roughly the same problem. Not only would this necessitate more soldiers on the ground and provoke greater conflict with Damascus and Moscow, but it would also be a misguided measure given that civilians face a deadlier threat from shootings, mortar, rocket, and artillery attacks than from airstrikes.
Much has been made of coalition airstrikes which have successfully eliminated upper-level ISIS operatives. But at best these strikes justify containing militants (a policy which Clinton rejects), not a policy of total annihilation in the long term (a policy which she espouses). If the war on terror has taught us anything, it’s that celebrating the deaths of these leaders is premature. Consider, as an example, American-led NATO airstrikes which took out senior Afghan Taliban leaders in 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014. The objective of these attacks was to weaken, if not extinguish, the Taliban. Yet the UN and Yale University’s Political Violence FieldLab warn that the Taliban are stronger today than at any point since 2001. Fifteen years later, the White House admits that the Taliban are still gaining militarily. Why should anybody expect the fortunes of jihadi extremists in Iraq and Syria—who are even more geographically diffuse and more difficult to target than the Taliban—to be significantly different? Whack-a-mole isn’t just the game we play if we fail to forge partnerships in the Middle East. It’s the foreseeable upshot of an indefinite bombing campaign stretching over the two biggest continents while generating strong disapproval worldwide.
In short, the evidence suggests that multiplying airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria simultaneously is not just unlawful, but also likely to bring about a great deal of unnecessary suffering for noncombatants, reproduce rather than curtail violence, and plunge the United States into its deepest quagmire yet. There are obviously no entirely “clean” options when it comes to battling ISIS, but more armed intervention is not the answer. As we’ve learned from the recently collapsed cease-fire deal between the US and Russia, the process of helping cut a political deal among such a large number of loosely allied actors will be long and painful. It is nonetheless superior to poorly conceived military action of the sort Clinton defends. The only debate we should be having is about how best to arrive at a political settlement and humanitarian solutions, not how to escalate a military conflict whose basic dynamic amounts to a stalemate in which violence simply feeds upon itself.
What the Plan to Step Up Airstrikes Tells Us About Clinton’s Agenda
We should evaluate Clinton’s proposed surge in airstrikes not only in the context of her unstinting support of the war on terror, but also of the heroic rhetoric by which that war is propelled. She is, at the end of the day, a presidential candidate who firmly believes that America’s destiny is to police the world, declaring that “when America is absent, especially from unstable places, there are [negative] consequences.” By making this imperialist assumption, Clinton mistakes the problem for the solution. More frighteningly, once the US has arrogated to itself the power to interfere in any part of the world supposedly in need of stability, objections on the basis of long-term ramifications, human cost, or international law can conveniently be brushed aside.
Public officials can then simply substitute jingoism for sensible policymaking. Clinton is following in the footsteps of Republicans and Democrats alike in constantly styling the United States as the matchless liberator of the oppressed and the greatest force for good in the world. Her remarks on the Orlando attack are but one instance of this monomaniacal patriotism.
The Democratic presidential nominee’s invocation of LGBT rights is really just one of her myriad shifting pretexts for military meddling in the Muslim world. America had to intervene (and remain involved) in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya to promote “freedom” and “democratic reform,” to protect “women and children” and guarantee the “security” of the people of New York, to enforce the “redline condition[]” of respecting the “rights of … minorities,” to eradicate “corruption,” and to spread “peace” along with “our values.” What puts into doubt the sincerity of the Democratic establishment’s commitment to these ideals is the lack of any discussion on military intervention to promote democratic reform in, say, North Korea, to assure the safety of women and children in Zimbabwe, to shield minorities from abuse in Myanmar, or tackle corruption and spread American values in Venezuela. And if ISIS’ persecution of LGBT people gives just cause for armed intervention, then why doesn’t Saudi Arabia’s death penalty for same-sex acts or harsh punishments for cross-dressing? Such inconsistencies invite us to assess the geopolitical value of the places where Clinton has favored military intervention, and to identify the unglamorous national interests which are subsequently rationalized by heroic liberal discourse on freedoms and rights.
In this way, Orlando became a moment of supreme opportunity for Clinton to perform an act of muscular nationalism by adding the oppression of LGBT people to the arsenal of false pretenses for American militarism. Promising “as president … to break down all the barriers … keeping us apart,” she implicitly encouraged Americans to choose her to lead the country. The inadvertent message is that we are to vote blue no matter what carnage may ensue.
Neither choice this election year is appealing, but a satisfactory case can be made for why Clinton’s candidacy is still better than Trump’s. In the long run, though, we have much work to do if we want to see progressive politics become mainstream. Clinton is the preferable candidate on domestic LGBT rights, but for our country to be anything like the city upon a hill both Democrats and Republicans imagine, we’ve got a long way to go.
It is a truism that jihadism is reprehensible, incoherent, and pathological in the extreme. Many Americans are wondering whether what happened last month in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota was driven by this authoritarian ideology. But using the danger it poses to LGBT and other minority rights either to legitimate discrimination against Muslims or to sustain the war on terror only betrays the principles of liberty and justice we Americans rightly cherish.