Adam Serwer

Reporter

Adam Serwer is a reporter at Mother Jones. Formerly a staff writer at the American Prospect, he has written for the Washington Post, the Root, the Village Voice, and the New York Daily News.

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Figuring Out Who The "Moderate" Islamists Are

—By Adam Serwer

| Mon Nov. 7, 2011 3:39 PM PST

Tablet's Lee Smith thinks "moderate Islamist" is an oxymoron, and that the "moderates" are "more dangerous than the extremists by a matter of magnitude."

Indeed, “moderate” is a word that gets thrown around recklessly when it comes to the Islamist groups that comprise this new Muslim Brotherhood crescent. Consider the leader of al-Nahda, Rashid Ghannoushi, who, after many years of exile, may well be Tunisia’s next prime minister. He is routinely described as a moderate, even though he has praised the mothers of suicide bombers and believes that the “region will get rid of the germ of Israel.”

Perhaps to better understand the term “moderate” we might consider Islamist parties in the context of how they exercise power in their local environments. Where Osama Bin Laden spoke of a revived caliphate that would unite the umma, Islamists like Ghannoushi, Erdogan, and the Muslim Brotherhood are focused on their own national projects. Extremist Islamist outfits like Bin Laden’s original al-Qaida live in caves and rely on the support of Middle Eastern governments in order to accomplish operations like blowing up planes. So-called moderate Islamist parties, on the other hand, win electoral contests that leave them in charge of Middle Eastern governments, security services, and militaries with artillery, tanks, air forces, and navies.

It's not all that useful to use fuzzy feelings towards Israel as a way to discern the "moderation" of Islamists.

Unfortunately, everyone in the region pretty much hates Israel, Islamist or otherwise. A 2010 Zogby International poll found that 70 percent of citizens in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco sympathized with both Hamas and Fatah "to some extent." Seventeen percent of responsdents cited Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal when asked which Palestinian leader they "admire most." (Current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas got just 15 percent.) This is despite the fact that Hamas has used suicide terrorism as a tactic against Israel.

It seems almost too obvious to write, but people in the Middle East see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a very different light than people in the US, and as a result it's a poor way to evaluate ideological moderation on other issues.

A more useful gauge of the "moderation" of Islamists would be their willingness to accept democratic institutions and checks on government power that allow minorities and women to be secure in their rights. Tunisia's Ennahada appears moderate in that respect so far, having pledged not to seek a greater role for religion in Tunisia's new constitution. That makes them more moderate than say, Egyptian Salafists knifing Christians in the street. Although the degree to which new governments will actually be in control of the military in countries like Egypt remains a really open question, Islamist parties that win elections that leave them in charge of modern militaries will nevertheless also be accountable to their voters for how they use them.

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Architect of Arizona's Anti-Immigration Law May Lose His Seat

—By Adam Serwer

| Mon Nov. 7, 2011 12:32 PM PST

Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce (R).

Republican Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, the architect of the state's draconian anti-immigrantion law, may lose his seat in tomorrow's recall election. According to a poll by a local ABC affiliate, Pearce is running neck-and-neck with his Republican challenger Jerry Lewis:

Lewis holds a 46-43 percent lead over Pearce in the historic recall contest, but the edge is within the poll’s margin of error.

"Statistically here, what we’ve got is a dead heat," said Jeremy Moreland, a Valley pollster who conducted the survey. "Both Lewis and Pearce are within the margin of error of one another."

Pearce has a considerable financial advantage. According to the ABC affiliate, Pearce "raised an eye-popping $230,000—including donations from more than 40 states—compared to Lewis’ $69,000." Yet despite that advantage, and the fact that his campaign managed to get a sham candidate, Olivia Cortes, on the ballot, Pearce may still lose.

Pearce's opponents challenged Cortes' candidacy in court and Maricopa County Judge Edward Burke wrote in his ruling that that Cortes was recruited by Pearce allies "to siphon Hispanic votes from Lewis to advance Pearce's recall-election bid." Nevertheless, Burke ruled that Cortes could stay on the ballot, because "he could find no wrongdoing by Cortes herself." According to the ABC-15 poll, Cortes is still polling at about 2.5 percent, which in an election this close could mean the difference between Pearce keeping or losing his seat. In one last desperate attempt to swing the election in Pearce's favor, his allies are behind a misleading robocall in an effort to manipulate voters into casting a ballot for Cortes.

Pearce, who drafted the 2010 law after meeting with officials from the American Legislative Exchange Council and Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison company, became state Senate president following Republican gains in the 2010 elections. But despite his rise in political stature, his anti-immigrant agenda met with more resistance than expected, and he was recently implicated by an investigation that showed him and other Arizona lawmakers illegally accepting Fiesta Bowl tickets.

While Pearce's odd ability to "accidentally" associate with white supremacists didn't stop him from rising to state senate president in Arizona, his Republican opponent has taken a moderate stance on immigration, saying during their debate a few weeks ago that "we need to make sure we address this issue in a humane way." So it's not just that Pearce might lose. It's that the state's most anti-immigrant politician might be defeated by the kind of Republican moderate on immigration that, back in 2010, seemed almost extinct.

CIA to Be More Careful With Its Deadly Flying Robots

—By Adam Serwer

| Fri Nov. 4, 2011 8:54 AM PDT

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the CIA is reining in the use of its drone program in Pakistan following objections from other agencies, particularly the State Department.

Among the changes: The State Department won greater sway in strike decisions; Pakistani leaders got advance notice about more operations; and the CIA agreed to suspend operations when Pakistani officials visit the US.

Drones are a delicate political issue in Pakistan, where the Pakistani government has long denied (and still denies) that US drone strikes are carried out with its permission. As Marc Ambinder and Jeffrey Goldberg write, US relations with Pakistan have deteriorated even further since the raid on the Pakistani city of Abbotabad in which Osama bin Laden was killed, and Pakistani citizens have grown even angrier about the fact that the US can bomb their country any time it wants. US officials, on the other hand, see the strikes as one of their only options for dealing with militants striking in Afghanistan from across the border, some of whom retain support from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

There are basically two kinds of strikes the CIA carries out—strikes on specific targets and "signature strikes," which target groups of individuals the government suspects are militants. How does it know they're actually militants? It "tracks their movements and activities for hours or days before striking them." Which is to say, the CIA thinks it's getting the right people, but it doesn't always know for sure. And when asked, the government claims that the CIA almost never makes mistakes. White House Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan said in June that there hadn't been "a single collateral death" from the drone program in almost a year.

Third-party evaluations of the drone program say otherwise. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism concluded in a report released in August that "at least 392 civilians" were among the estimated nearly 2,500 people killed in drone strikes since 2004. Then there's the first-hand experiences of Pakistanis who have lost family members as a result of drone strikes.

This isn't the first time the State Department has sought to rein in the vastly expanded use of drones against suspected terrorists since Obama took office. In September Charlie Savage reported that State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh was embroiled in a dispute with Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson over the standards for targeted killing in places like Somalia and Yemen, far away from the active zone of military combat in Afghanistan.

In its dispute with the CIA, though, State seems to have had a key ally in its argument that the drone program was harming the US' ability to convince Pakistan to help the US wind down the war in Afghanistan. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new head of the CIA, David Petraeus, "voiced caution against strikes on large groups of fighters."

The GOP's Deregulatory Christmas List

—By Adam Serwer

| Thu Nov. 3, 2011 11:50 AM PDT

The Senate is set to take up votes on the Republican and Democratic infrastructure proposals this afternoon, but the GOP has already stuffed their proposal with regulatory rollbacks they know the Democrats will never agree to.

The GOP proposal contains the REINS Act, which would require a separate vote on economic regulations "with an expected annual economic impact of $100 million or more," which would, as Ezra Klein noted back in February, "destroy the government's capacity to pass major regulations," by adding a major procedural hurdle that sounds like a minor change.

The bill would also restrict the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate pollution under the Clean Air Act, a change which the EPA estimates would lead to 20,000 premature deaths due to adverse health effects from pollution. It also contains the Regulatory Time-Out Act, which would prevent new economic regulations from being put in place for a year, a move Senate Dems view as just a backdoor way for Republicans to forestall Wall Street reform. Obama has actually put in place fewer regulations than Bush at this point in his term, and weak consumer demand rather than excessive regulation is holding back job growth, but why not ask for a pony even if you know you're not going to get one?

While the GOP proposal contains some funds for infrastructure spending, rather than accept a minor surtax on millionaires it pays for itself by cutting spending so drastically the White House has threatened a veto. This GOP alternative is less a jobs proposal than a deregulatory Christmas list.

UPDATE: Naturally, the Democrats' bill was filibustered this afternoon.

Desperately Seeking Anita

—By Adam Serwer

| Thu Nov. 3, 2011 10:33 AM PDT

Slate's Dave Weigel reports that Iowa Rep. Steve King doesn't see the big deal about sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain that have surfaced in recent days. For him, it comes down to one thing:

"Where’s the Anita Hill?" he said. "This is an Anita Hill issue, and from what I see, without substance, this shouldn’t have been a story."

It's funny, however, that King should mention Hill, the former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission employee who testified under oath that she had been harassed by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, since it's not as though no Republicans have dealt with sexual scandals since then. Rather, as Jesse Taylor points out, "There haven't even been enough black Republicans of note in the past two decades to have another scandal."

King's reference to Hill may have greater meaning than merely recalling the last time a prominent black conservative was accused of sexual harassment. As it so happens, two of the women who accused Cain of harassment are bound by confidentiality agreements as part of the settlements reached over the allegations. One of them was considering coming forward but changed her mind, according to the New York Times. Why? According to her attorney, Joel P. Bennett, "She has a life to live and a career, and she doesn't want to become another Anita Hill."

Beliefs about Thomas' guilt tend to fall along partisan lines—if you're a Democrat you think he was lying, if you're a Republican you think Hill was lying. What isn't a matter of perception, however, is that when Hill came forward, the right set out to completely destroy her at all costs. David Brock, the former right-wing journalist who defected and formed the left-wing media watchdog Media Matters, wrote a book about Hill that portrayed her as a mentally unstable, promiscuous liar, a characterization immortalized by Brock's description of Hill as "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." Brock's The Real Anita Hill was later eviscerated by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, and Brock himself later recanted, but Hill's reputation was destroyed and Thomas was confirmed.

I don't know whether the allegations against Cain are true—the settlements confirm the existence of the allegations and not necessarily their veracity. An accuser coming forward would provide the right with an obvious target, someone to destroy, rather than simply watching Cain helplessly try to deflect the issue by blaming other campaigns for leaking the existence of the settlements.

Things have changed since The Real Anita Hill. Destroying someone's reputation is as simple as a selectively edited YouTube clip. Given the combined heavy artillery of the vastly expanded Republican noise machine, it's easy to understand why Republicans are looking for a "new Anita Hill," and why Cain's accusers don't want to be her. Cain aside, the only real winners in this scenario are powerful men of all political stripes who would rather keep their bad behavior secret.