The Voyager

In one of the most successful viral marketing campaigns ever launched, a 30-minute video detailing the horrors of Ugandan guerilla leader Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army made the rounds on Facebook and Twitter last week.

The “Stop Kony 2012” campaign is a project by the activist group and charity organization Invisible Children, and its YouTube video has racked up 75 million views in less than two weeks.

As a filmmaker, I found the video to be a relatively well-done piece of sentimental emotion porn that was kind of long and pretentious. As a foreign policy and world news junkie, I found it oversimplified and wrongheaded in its methods.

I have absolutely no doubt that almost everyone who posted the video to his or her Facebook page had good intentions, and it was nice to see people take an interest in a worthy cause in a largely overlooked part of the world — though, admittedly, my first reaction was a snarky “thanks, white people, for finally noticing that horrible things are happening in Africa.”

My familiarity with the name Joseph Kony is also relatively recent. Besides vaguely remembering a Vanity Fair article about the LRA by the late Christopher Hitchens in 2006, I first really registered the name Joseph Kony in the fall of 2011.

Last October, President Obama authorized the deployment of 100 military advisers to forward operating bases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan in order to assist the Ugandan military in hunting down and capturing Kony.

I also remember shortly after the troops were deployed, the odious Rush Limbaugh basically defended Kony and the LRA and accused Obama of sending troops to murder Christians who were killing Muslims in the Sudan.

That was when I did my first research into who were Joseph Kony and the LRA, and after Invisible Children’s wildly successful promotional campaign last week, I decided to revisit some of that research.

So, let’s look at the facts, shall we?

When Uganda’s horrific military dictator Idi Amin was removed from power in 1979 following the Uganda-Tanzania War, the country fell into a brutal civil war that lasted until 1986.

In the years following the civil war, sometimes referred to as the Luwero War or the Ugandan Bush War, Uganda has been controlled by leaders of the National Resistance Army.

But in Northern Uganda, guerilla groups fought against the NRA’s rule, and one such group was the Lord’s Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony.

For 20 years, Kony’s LRA led a brutal campaign of terrorism, rape, abduction and torture, killing tens of thousands of civilians and kidnapping thousands of children who were used as sex slaves and fighters for the LRA.

A 2004 report by the Ugandan Refugee Law Project estimated that between 20,000 and 25,000 children had been abducted and that 1.4 million people had been displaced because of the LRA. Presumably, those figures are considerably higher now.

In 2005, the International Criminal Court issued its first ever arrest warrants for five leaders of the LRA, including Kony, and indicted the LRA on 21 counts of war crimes and 12 counts of human rights violations.

By 2006, following failed peace talks with the Ugandan government, the LRA moved its base of operations from Northern Uganda into the DRC, CAR and South Sudan.

Since 2006, Kony and the LRA’s sphere of influence have been considerably weakened, and the group is estimated to consist of only a few hundred remaining fighters.

This is not to suggest the LRA does not still pose a threat to Central Africa.

Kony and the LRA remain at large and still carry out attacks on the civilian populations.

A 2011 report by the International Crisis Group estimates that the LRA killed more than 2,400 civilians, abducted more than 3,400 and caused 440,000 to flee their homes in the Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic since 2006.

So, there is no question that the campaign to stop Kony and the LRA is a worthy cause deserving of attention. My issue with the “Stop Kony” campaign was not with the cause itself but with the charity Invisible Children and its methodology.

Firstly, we need to understand that Kony and the LRA are no longer in Uganda and have not carried out attacks there since 2006. Secondly, the LRA does not have an army of 30,000 child soldiers, as the video suggests.

That figure refers to the total number abducted and killed in the LRA’s 20-year existence.

And the LRA’s real numbers stand at fewer than 1,000 soldiers.

The real question is what exactly does Invisible Children’s campaign actually hope to accomplish? They say they want to make Kony famous in order to aid in his capture.

But isn’t that exactly what the Obama administration is trying to do with its deployed military advisors?

Invisible Children’s video says, “if the [U.S.] government doesn’t believe the people care about Kony, the mission will be cancelled.”

And apparently to show our government that people care, Invisible Children wants people to buy their $30 Kony 2012 kit that includes arm bracelets and posters.

This is just silly, juvenile nonsense. The Obama administration doesn’t care if people wear stupid Kony bracelets. Capturing Kony was already official U.S. policy as well as the policy of the African Union.

Also, whether Invisible Children realizes it or not, it is possible this promotional campaign will help lead to the U.S. expanding its troop presence in Central Africa.

And for a campaign aimed at stopping the use of child soldiers, Invisible Children seems to ignore the fact that the current Ugandan government ruled by the NRA has its own dirty past of using child soldiers.

This is not to mention that the NRA has its own host of human rights abuses under Yoweri Museveni who has ruled Uganda in a near-dictatorial manner since 1986.

While it’s very unlikely that the U.S. will be going to war in Central Africa anytime soon, Washington’s military presence and sphere of influence in the region may soon swell under the auspices of this Kony campaign.

It may also be worth noting that, in 2010, the Obama administration gutted the Child Soldiers Protection Act and waived penalties for Yemen, South Sudan, Chad and the DRC.

So, it’s at least worth raising questions about what Washington’s interests in Central Africa really entail, if not to protect the recruitment of child soldiers.

Look, capturing Kony would be great, and there’s nothing wrong with bringing attention to a worthy cause. But in all honesty, there are better, more effective charities and organizations deserving of people’s money and support than Invisible Children.

If you want to really get involved and make a difference in Africa, then I suggest donating to organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders, and leave capturing Kony to the experts on the ground who were already trying to do just that.

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Did you know that, technically speaking, all of the voting that has and is currently taking place at the primaries and caucuses across the country is actually not the final deciding factor for how presidential candidates are chosen?

It’s true. Presidential candidates are ultimately chosen at conventions by delegates from the political parties — and the will of the primary and caucus voters can theoretically be overturned.

This is the second part of my two-part series examining the presidential election process in America. In the first installment, I discussed the absurdity that is the Electoral College and called for it to be abandoned.

In this installment I would like to examine this ridiculous process of presidential candidate nomination by delegates.

Believe it or not, this topic is so dense and confusing that I cannot possibly discuss every aspect of it substantively here (which is perhaps indicative of how crazy the system is).

The delegate selection rules, and the manner in which nominating conventions operate, have changed considerably over the years and have even changed in subtle ways between every presidential election.

But I will try to do my best to provide a condensed explanation of the process based on the current rules.

A delegate is basically someone picked to represent his or her political party at the nominating convention. How delegates are chosen varies from state to state and between the political parties.

For the Republican Party, some states will automatically allot a certain number of delegates based on the number of congressional districts while other states allot delegates to the state as a whole. It’s also possible for bonus delegates to be awarded if the state has a Republican majority in the state legislature, elected Republicans for Congress or as governor or voted for a Republican in the last presidential election.

The Republicans currently have 2,380 delegates, and a candidate needs 1,191 delegates to become the nominee.

Many states use a winner-take-all system for their Republican primaries, such as Florida, meaning if a candidate wins the state’s primary all of the state’s delegates will pledge to vote for that candidate at the nominating convention.

However, some states, such as New York and Texas, use a proportional system that allows the delegates to be divvied up based on how many votes each candidate received in the primary.

Although most of the Republican delegates will be determined state to state either through primaries or caucuses, there are also about 500 delegates that are considered “unbound,” meaning there is no legal obligation for which candidate they must vote, and they are free to decide as they please come the convention.

Many of the unbound delegates come from states with non-binding primaries and caucuses. As a result, those contests are basically only cosmetic and the delegates can actually decide for themselves at the convention.

Non-binding primaries and caucuses generally cost each state millions of dollars to hold and essentially amount to an incredibly expensive straw poll.

The Democratic primaries and caucuses, on the other hand, have a uniform system that awards all delegates proportionally, though candidates must reach a threshold of above 15 percent.

Each Democratic state delegation is required to have an equal balance of men and women and even comply with certain affirmative-action policies as set by the Democratic National Committee. However, each state is free to come up with their own delegate-selection plan that conforms to these requirements and have it approved by the DNC .

Democrats currently have 4,049 delegates, and a candidate needs 2,025 delegates to become the nominee.

However, the Democrats also have so-called “superdelegates” that are similar to unbound delegates and are free to vote for whichever candidate they want.

There are approximately 800 superdelegates, and they include all the members of the DNC, all current Democratic members of Congress, current Democratic governors, and party leaders such as former Democratic presidents, vice presidents and congressional leaders.

Also, the regular Democratic delegates awarded through primaries and caucuses are considered “pledged” delegates and are technically under no legal obligation to cast their votes at the convention for whomever won their respective states — though pledged delegates rarely vote for a candidate that did not win the state.

If a candidate does not win enough delegate votes to secure either the Republican or Democratic nomination, then the parties will have what is known as a “brokered convention.”

In the situation of a brokered convention, essentially, all bets are off. The primary and caucus results are thrown out the window, and the candidate will be selected through a dizzying series of horse-trading, power-brokering re-votes on the convention floor.

The last Democratic brokered convention was in 1952 with Adlai Stevenson eventually becoming the nominee even though Estes Kefauver went into the convention with more delegate votes.

And the last Republican brokered convention was in 1948 with Thomas Dewey eventually winning the nomination after struggling to defeat Robert Taft.

In 2008, the Democrats almost had a brokered convention, but Barak Obama managed to edge out Hillary Clinton by the time of the convention.

And it looks increasingly possible that a brokered convention might be possible for the upcoming 2012 Republican convention if Mitt Romney doesn’t safely secure the nomination.

So, if it isn’t abundantly clear yet, this system of delegate nomination is totally insane, hopelessly outdated, needlessly overcomplicated and utterly inconsistent from state to state and party to party.

Granted, reforming this system would be next to impossible considering the political parties are so set in their ways, but let’s consider some ways we could fix this madness.

Perhaps the easiest solution would be to just have a binding nationwide primary on a single day a few months before the general election that would select the candidates for all political parties through overall popular votes.

Using this system, we could either get rid of delegates altogether or make their function non-binding and just for-show at the conventions.

Another way would be to create a consistent nationwide system for delegate allocation, requiring a proportional system in every state, and the delegates must vote in the conventions however their respective states decided in the primaries.

Whatever we do, I would hope we can all acknowledge that this current system is ridiculous and badly needs reform.

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Our country is in desperate need of electoral reform — and I’m not even talking about our horribly broken system of campaign financing. I mean the manner in which we elect presidents through the delegate-nominating system and the Electoral College is absolutely insane and makes no sense whatsoever.

So, it being an election year, I would like to examine our election system and make some recommendations on how to fix it. I realize my recommendations will probably be a bit unrealistic because they would require constitutional amendments in some cases, but I think these are things worth considering.

I will be splitting this subject into two parts. In this first installment, I will be examining the absurdity that is the Electoral College. And next week I will discuss the ridiculous process of candidate nomination by delegates of the two political parties.

As we all know, the president and vice-president are not chosen by the popular vote in the general election but by an absolute majority of votes from the Electoral College.

This is how the Electoral College works: As per Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, each state either elects or appoints electors that make up the Electoral College who cast a vote for president and vice president in the general election.

The number of electors must be equal to the total number of Congress members (but electors cannot be a member of Congress).

Ergo, there are currently 538 electors, meaning it takes the votes of at least 270 electors to win the general election.

It is up to each state as to how electors are chosen. For example, in Florida, the governor nominates electors to represent their political party, and the electors swear an oath to vote for the candidates of the party that he or she is nominated to represent (this is pretty close to how most state’s electors work, but some states nominate electors in party conventions).

Generally speaking, the electors act as functionaries of the state and pledge to cast their vote for whomever wins their state’s popular vote in the general election. However, they are not required to do so.

In theory, electors can actually cast their votes for anyone they choose. When electors cast their vote for someone other than who won their state’s popular vote, this process is called “faithless electors.”

Faithless electors are a rare occurrence, but it has happened several times over the years and as recently as 2004 when a Minnesota elector cast his vote for John Edwards for president instead of John Kerry (presumably by accident).

It also happened in 2000, when Elector Barbara Lett-Simmons cast an abstention vote in Washington D.C. instead of voting for Al Gore.

The Electoral College system also allows for the possibility that a candidate can win the presidency without winning the overall national popular vote.

Such an occurrence has happened four times in our nation’s history, most recently in the 2000 election debacle when Gore received 550,000 more votes than George W. Bush.

The Electoral College can also end in a tie. It’s only happened once in the 1800 election when Thomas Jefferson tied Aaron Burr in Electoral College votes. In this absurd scenario, the election gets turned over to be decided by Congress.

And don’t think an Electoral College tie cannot happen again. There are even a couple of completely plausible scenarios that could result in a tie in the upcoming 2012 election (such as this scenario).

If the election goes to Congress to be decided, the president would be chosen in the House of Representatives and the vice president would be chosen in the Senate.

To decide the president in the House, each state delegation gets one vote.

So, while the House currently has 435 members, they would collectively only be casting 50 votes with the representatives from each state voting as a group.

And, no, they are not obligated to cast their vote in line with how the voters in their respective states went. That means a state like Colorado could vote for Obama on Election Day, but since four of the state’s seven representatives are Republican, the state could theoretically end up going for Romney or whoever the Republican nominee is.

Furthermore, this also means that hypothetically Obama could be picked as president by the House and a Republican could be picked as vice president by the Senate or vice versa. This means we could have ended up with Obama and Sarah Palin in 2008 under such a scenario.

So, you may be wondering, then why the hell do we even have an Electoral College if it operates in such a ridiculous manner?

The Founders actually appropriated the system from the Holy Roman Empire, when, starting in the 13th century, elector princes chose the emperor.

The American Electoral College system was chosen, in part, because of the prevalence of slavery in the South and the worry that the infamous Three-Fifths compromise would lead to under-representation of southern states.

Also, there was the completely erroneous hope that such a system would discourage the most populated states from deciding the election at the detriment to the least populated states. However, the Electoral College actually allows just as easily for the opposite to occur.

The United States is currently the only county in the world that allows for an indirect election of an executive president.

Germany and India allow their parliaments to elect the president, but the real executive authority lies with the prime ministers who must win direct elections.

The Electoral College system is an outdated, arbitrary mess that should be completely eradicated.

It would take a constitutional amendment to change the system, but poll after poll has shown that the majority of Americans support such a change, such as a recent Gallop poll that found 62 percent favor nixing the Electoral College.

Our presidents should be chosen by the overall national popular vote, plain and simple — anything else is absurd.

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On December 31, President Obama signed into law the controversial National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, and critics have pounced on the bill claiming that it potentially allows for the indefinite detainment of American citizens.

Let me go ahead and warn everyone that this is a very complicated subject, but I’m going to do my best to try and make it intelligible.

On its surface, the NDAA is an 1844-page spending bill that authorizes $662 billion for the defense budget. But contained within the legislation are provisions that deal with the detention of terrorism suspects, specifically the portion of the bill entitled, “Subtitle D –Counterterrorism.”

These provisions of the bill do not so much expand presidential authority for detaining suspects as it does reaffirm an authority both former President Bush and Obama claim already existed as granted by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

The AUMF was a one-page joint resolution passed by Congress immediately after 9/11 authorizing the use of military force against those responsible for the terrorist attack and granted the President the authority “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” in 9/11.

Section 1021 of the NDAA codifies this authority of the AUMF and defines a “covered person” subject to this authority as the following:

“A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks” or “A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

So, in effect, this section puts a Congressional stamp of approval on the administration’s interpretation of the AUMF, even though the AUMF does not explicitly state anything about powers of detention.

The new language that is added to the NDAA that was not in the original AUMF is the phrase “substantially supported.”

This phrase is dangerously broad and could, perhaps, be used to detain someone only tangentially involved in organizations hostile to the United States.

Furthermore, when someone is detained that is deemed a “covered person,” the NDAA allows for four options for disposition, including trial by a military commission, trial by an alternate court or tribunal, or transfer of custody to the person’s country of origin or any foreign entity.

But the most terrifying option is “detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

Considering the War on Terror could potentially last forever, a person could reasonably be held indefinitely without trial under this provision.

However, contained is this provision is also language that says, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”

While it seems to exempt U.S. citizens, it still allows the potential for the detainment of U.S. citizens if captured outside of the United States.

But the next section does seem to allow for the potential for American citizens to be detained.

Section 1022 of the bill refers to a subset of “covered persons” defined as “a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force” and someone who “participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.”

If a person is detained that falls under this subset, the bill says the requirement for military custody “does not extend to citizens to the United States.”

The key word here is “requirement,” which does seem to suggest that the option for indefinite military detainment is still available but is simply not mandatory.

When Obama signed the NDAA into law (after backing down from his empty veto threat), he also offered a signing statement that said, “I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.

“Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation. My administration will interpret Section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war and all other applicable law.”

While that might be true (it’s too early to tell), it really suggests only that the Obama administration will not interpret the NDAA to include American citizens but completely leaves open the possibility that subsequent administrations will have a different interpretation.

Ultimately whether or not these provisions of the NDAA will be used in the worst-case scenario manner that critics fear is yet to be determined.

But there is no question that the bill absolutely could be interpreted to be used in such a manner, even if such a worst-case scenario is perhaps unlikely.

This is just the recent in a long line of measures the Obama administration has supported that curtail civil liberties in this country. Obama has proven to be just as hawkish, if not more so, on foreign policy than the Bush administration —  and many liberals and progressives are starting to feel this is not what they voted for in 2008.

The very fact that this legal ambiguity exists in a bill such as this is utterly unforgivable.

While the NDAA might not exactly be the end of the Bill of Rights as we know it, the bill is a dangerous piece of legislation that should have never been passed or signed into law with such shameful and troubling ambiguities.

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This weekend marked the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I know remembrance pieces of important events can sometimes become repetitive and nauseating. So, rather than just dwell on the tragedy of the day, I thought it might be interesting to take a different approach and examine what some of the effects of the war on terror have been over the past ten years.

In doing so, I have tried to compile a list of the most important statistics and facts relevant to the post-9/11 decade in order to see what the real legacy of that grim September day has been.

First let’s look at the human toll.

The Eisenhower Study Group of Brown University recently released a comprehensive study analyzing the human and economic costs of the war on terror.

The study found that in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over 6,000 U.S. military members have died, and at least 172,300 civilians, 31,741 allied security forces, 20,000 insurgents, 168 journalists, and 266 humanitarian workers have all been killed according to the most conservative estimates, bringing the grand total to at least 225,000 lives lost.

The study also found that millions of civilians have “been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions” because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, placing the total number of war refugees and displaced civilians at approximately 7.8 million.

Now let’s look at the state of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.

In December 2010, the Economist released a report analyzing the status of democracies across the globe, and Iraq ranked 111th out 165 countries on their democracy index scale.

The report labeled Iraq not as a democracy but as a “hybrid democracy,” meaning it contains some democratic principles but also maintains many authoritarian policies.

Afghanistan ranked 150th and was labeled not as a democracy at all but as an authoritarian regime.

In 2010, Transparency International did a study analyzing corruption around the world and ranked Iraq a 1.5 out of 10 on their corruption scale, making it the most corrupt country in the Middle East according to their metric.

Afghanistan scored a 1.4 and was ranked the most corrupt country in all of South Asia.

As for the economic costs of the war on terror, according to a recent study by the New York Times, approximately $3.3 trillion has been spent when tallying up the economic impact of 9/11, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, homeland security, care for veterans, etc.

The Brown University study places that figure as high as $4 trillion and counting, making the total costs equivalent to about one-fourth of the $14.7 trillion national debt.

This leads us into the bureaucratic changes since 9/11.

According to a 2010 investigation by the Washington Post, the counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence apparatus since 9/11 has grown to 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies employing an estimated 854,000 people.

These organizations have endless redundancies and waste associated with them (such as 51 federal organizations that track the flow of terrorist funding) and produce some 50,000 intelligence reports each year, many of which go unread.

Now let’s examine the changes to counter-terrorism policy since 9/11 still being used today under the Obama administration.

The Obama administration has continued many of the policies of the Bush administration when it comes to fighting the war on terror.

For example, the use of extraordinary rendition still exists, which is the practice of exporting terror suspects to other countries to be interrogated (often countries with a history of torturing suspects).

The practices of indefinite detention of terror suspects without bringing formal charges and of trying detainees in military tribunals instead of civilian courts are also still being used.

The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is still open (regardless of Obama’s promise to close it) and currently has 172 detainees. Also, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan has essentially become the new Guantanamo with about 650 detainees, many of which have been imprisoned for years with any formal charges.

The Patriot Act was renewed in May of this year, which still allows many controversial practices such as “sneak and peak” search warrants (allowing homes to be searched without the occupant’s knowledge), roving wiretaps, and secret intelligence surveillance of non-US persons who are not affiliated with a foreign organization, to name a few.

What about the status of the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission?

According to a recent report by the National Security Preparedness Group (which contained several members of the original 9/11 Commission), 32 of the 41 recommendations have been fulfilled or are being implemented in some fashion.

However, the report also found the country still lacked meaningful congressional oversight on issues of homeland security, the failure to create a Director of National Intelligence position, substandard transportation security screening, and the failure to develop coalition standards for the detention and humane treatment of terrorism suspects.

The report concludes, “A decade after 9/11, the nation is not yet prepared for a truly catastrophic disaster.”

In spite of this post-9/11 counter-terrorism apparatus, what is the state of terrorism in the world?

The Heritage Foundation released a study last week that suggests 40 terrorist plots on U.S. soil have been foiled since 9/11, though it is difficult to ascertain how many of those plots were serious threats and how many were actually thwarted by counter-terrorism policies.

And while there is no question that al-Qaida as a central terrorist organization has been weakened since 9/11, many splinter and copycat groups sprang up this past decade, such as  al-Qaida in Pakistan, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Qaida in Iraq.

In 2001, the U.S. State Department designated 28 terrorist organizations across the globe, and now that list has grown to 48 terrorist organizations.

According to the most recent data of the Institute of Conflict Management, there have been 736 suicide attacks in Afghanistan since 9/11 with 3,755 lives lost.

The ICM data also indicates that Pakistan (which prior to 9/11 had only seen one suicide attack in 1995) has had 289 suicide attacks since 9/11 killing 4,681 people.

The British medical journal Lancet recently released a study that suggests Iraq has seen 1,003 documented suicide attacks since 2003 killing over 12,000 civilians.

This suggests the threat of terrorism still exists and, in many respects, has only exacerbated since 9/11.

So, where does all this leave us? What picture do all these statistics paint for a post-9/11 world? Have the results of the war on terror been worth the costs?

Well, I suppose that’s up for each of us to decide. But as we each draw our own conclusions, I hope we take these facts and figures into account — because if we truly want to never forgot the events of 9/11 then we also need to reckon the real tolls and legacy of the past decade.

W. Paul Smith
Opinions Editor

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