Issue #13/68, July 1 - 15, 1999  

by Matt Taibbi

I have a laminated ID card in my wallet. It contains my picture, surrounded by a thick red circle. Above the picture is a notation in giant block letters: "ASSHOLE". My name and signature run along the bottom of the card.

The card was given to me as a gift by my father, who had some of his interns make it up for him. The idea of the card, as he explained it, is to pull it out and flash it whenever I anticipate any kind of criticism. If I've done something obnoxious and someone makes like they might protest, I'm supposed to pull the card out immediately, and then hold up my other hand in a pacifying, police-negotiator-style gesture. "It's okay, it's okay," I'm supposed to say. "I'm an asshole."

I've tried it a few times. It works--the instant that card comes out of the wallet, the argument is usually over. It leaves people speechless with exasperation. It's like magic. I'm amazed more people haven't tried it--or, at least, I was amazed, until I realized this past week that my father and I had both been scooped by the U.S. government, which has been using it on journalists for years.

Check out the lead in this past week's story by Tom Raum, of the Associated Press:

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States should not be bound by a landmark 1972 arms-control treaty in moving toward deployment of a national missile defense system, the Clinton administration's top arms-control official said Monday.

"John Holum, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that deployment decisions should be based on what best serves the national interest."

Holum's bosses, in other words, had been caught violating the 1972 ABM treaty, and had sent him to explain things to reporters by holding up that red-ringed card. "It's okay," he said, speaking for the government. "I'm an asshole."

The "we're-violating-international-law-because-we-can" story has increasingly become a constant in coverage of American foreign policy. At the outset of the Yugoslavia war, when the United States violated all sorts of international laws against interventionist aggression (and NATO's own defensive charter), it held up its big red asshole card, and the entire international press corps went mute. In retrospect, the coterie of State Department and Pentagon spokeshumans who handled what few international law questions the press tossed at them used a brilliant tactic, which was to not even try to deny that they were breaking the law. Instead, they simply tossed around words like "compelling concern", "moral imperative", or, in this case, "national interest". Meaning, in short: "We're breaking the law because we feel like it."

Think about it--what does Holum really mean, when he says "deployment decisions should be based on what best serves the national interest"? He means, obviously, "deployment decisions based on what we want."

Which is not much of an answer, when you think about it. After all, the whole point of the ABM treaty was to prevent both sides from doing "what best serves the national interest." Reaching a stage where your territory is nuke-proof, and your enemy's is not, is definitely in "the national interest". It is not, however, in the international interest, or in Russia's interest, because having a credible nuclear defense also means having a credible nuclear offense. By reviving the ABM system, the United States is positioning itself, in theory, to be a nuclear aggressor--something the world should shudder at, considering our recent behavior in the Balkans.

Haum, however, does not address any of these questions. He stands mute before the asshole card and allows the government to get away with its casual dismissal of international law. In fact, not once in either of his two articles on the subject does he even mention the original intention of the ABM treaty, which was to uphold the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The only time he even comes close to addressing the issue is in the following remarkable passage:

"The Clinton administration earlier opposed moving ahead with a large-scale missile defense program, saying it would violate terms of the treaty.

"But in a compromise with congressional Republicans, President Clinton last spring agreed to support legislation committing the nation to a missile-defense system. Top Republican leaders were to rally Tuesday on the Capitol steps to applaud Clinton's signing of that measure.

"In light of new estimates on the ballistic missile threat, in particular from North Korea and Iran, national missile defense is now closer to becoming another integral part of our strategy against proliferation,' Holum testified."

This is an amazingly deceptive piece of writing. The first paragraph here allows the Clinton administration to appear to have been concerned about violating international law. The second paragraph, however, gently cancels that assertion via a masterpiece of euphemistic phraseology. The phrase "...in a compromise with congressional Republicans, President Clinton agreed..." could have been written a different way. It could have--and should have--read: "But in order to make his life easier, President Clinton decided he was not all that concerned about violating the terms of the treaty." I mean, that's what it really comes down to.

Haum then goes on to give Holum one more chance to underscore the defensive imperative of creating an ABM system, citing the "threat" posed by "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran.

Okay, Tom, what threat? Think about it: we just bombed the hell out of a country in Europe with the full force of our conventional arsenal, and it didn't so much as toss a stray beer can on the territory of the United States in response. And no matter how "crazy" the U.S. government says rogue states like North Korea or Iran are capable of being, it's important to remember that the MAD doctrine still holds true for small countries. Nobody is going to launch an ICBM strike against the United States: even North Korea doesn't want to be turned into a radioactive parking lot. A Reuters story on the same subject addresses the mutually assured destruction issue, but obediently waves it away in the face of protests by government spokesmen:

"The idea at the time of the ABM Treaty was that neither side would be likely to launch a nuclear strike if they knew they had no defenses to prevent the resulting catastrophe.

"But many military experts, diplomats and national security figures in Washington feel the ABM Treaty is a Cold War relic that has no place in a new, more dangerous world where so-called rogue states like North Korea and Iraq might attempt a missile strike against the United States."

The words "Cold War relic" here are code for, "Left over from a time when we had an enemy who we feared enough to adhere to the law." Further down, the sentence "new, more dangerous world where so-called rogue states like North Korea and Iraq may attempt a missile strike against the United States" is tossed out there with such confidence that one might be momentarily misled into thinking it isn't patently ridiculous. But think about it: a world without a formidable enemy is more dangerous than a world with one? Iraq is a bigger threat than Soviet Russia?

The thing about the asshole card is that, logically, it shouldn't work. Journalists like Raum shouldn't be fooled into being quieted on an issue just because the government breezily insists that something it's doing is not a big deal. Shoplifters don't pour sweat and shiver and beg for mercy on their way out the door-you have to catch them in the act. The same is true with bureaucrats and politicians. Their demeanor should never be a defense.