From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting back on Oct. 3, 2010 by Peter Hart
Apparently not, judging by the Washington Post's October 3 story ("Military Drones Aid CIA's mission") about the CIA's expansion of its drone war in Pakistan. It is "part of a high-stakes attempt by the Obama administration to deal decisive blows to Taliban insurgents," and also "a significant evolution of an already controversial targeted killing program."
Post readers get details from "a U.S. official"--who says things like, "Our intelligence has gotten a lot better." The only other perspective comes from Bruce Reidel at Brookings, who is "a former CIA analyst who led the Obama administration's initial overhaul of its Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy." In other words, not much of a critic.
There are obviously fundamental questions about this policy--such as whether it's legal, something Jim Lobe wrote about recently for Inter Press Service (4/2/10).
Tags: CIA, Jim Lobe, Pakistan
Inter Press Service story from April 2010 ...
Legality of Drone Strikes Still in Question
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON, Apr 2, 2010 (IPS) - While welcoming an initial effort by the administration of President Barack Obama to offer a legal justification for drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists overseas, human rights groups say critical questions remain unanswered.
In an address to an international law group last week, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh insisted that such operations were being conducted in full compliance with international law.
"The U.S. is in armed conflict with al Qaeda as well as the Taliban and associated forces in response to the horrific acts of 9/11 and may use force consistent with its right to self-defence under international law," he said. "...(I)ndividuals who are part of such armed groups are belligerents and, therefore, lawful targets under international law."
Moreover, he went on, "U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war," which require limiting attacks to military objectives and that the damage caused to civilians by those attacks would not be excessive.
While right-wing commentators expressed satisfaction with Koh's evocation of the "right to self-defence" - the same justification used by President George W. Bush - human rights groups were circumspect.
"We are encouraged that the administration has taken the legal surrounding drone strikes seriously," said Jonathan Manes of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "While this was an important and positive first step, a number of controversial questions were left unanswered."
"We still don't know what criteria the government uses to determine that a civilian is acting like a fighter, and can therefore be killed, and... whether there are any geographical limits on where drone strikes can be used to target and kill individuals," he told IPS.
"He didn't really say anything that we took issue with," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), who also complained about the lack of details.
"But it still leaves unanswered the question of how far the war paradigm he's talking about extends. Will it extend beyond, say, ungoverned areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen? Because you don't want to leave a legal theory out there that could be exploited by a country like Russia or China to knock off its political enemies on the streets of a foreign city," he added.
Drone attacks, which have increased significantly under Obama, are widely considered to have become the single-most effective weapon in Washington's campaign disrupt al Qaeda and affiliated groups, especially in the frontier areas of western Pakistan.
In Obama's first year in office, more strikes were carried out than in the previous eight years under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), they reportedly killed "several hundred" al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban militants since Obama in 2009, forcing many of them to flee their border hideouts for large cities where precision attacks would be much harder to carry out without causing heavy civilian casualties.
But the strikes - as well as cruise-missile attacks carried out by the U.S. military against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and Somalia - have drawn growing criticism from some human rights groups and legal scholars, notably the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston, who have argued that several aspects of these operations may violate international law.
Their focus has been less on the use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Washington's forces are engaged in active hostilities and the Pentagon has implemented relatively transparent procedures to maximise compliance with the laws of war, than on the frontier areas of Pakistan and other "ungoverned" areas where al Qaeda and Taliban militants have gained refuge. The CIA, whose procedures remain secret, is in charge of drone operations.
The weapon itself "is one of the least problematic from a civilian-protection standpoint, because drones can hover over their targets and observe whether civilians are present before delivering a payload, and because they carry relatively small and precisely guided munitions," noted Malinowski.
"The question is a legal one: under what circumstances can you use lethal force at all? Our view has always been that it should be limited to zones of active armed conflict where normal arrest operations are not feasible."
A related question involves who may be targeted. While many authorities insist lethal force can be used under the laws of war against those who are actively participating in armed conflict, the U.S. has used defined participation in very broad terms, including membership in - or even financial support of - an armed group.
In his remarks to the American Society for International Law, Koh, who was one of the harshest and most outspoken critics of the Bush administration's legal tactics in its "global war on terror", acknowledged some of these concerns, noting that his speech "is obviously not the occasion for a detailed legal opinion."
"(W)hether a particular individual will be targeted in a particular location will depend upon considerations specific to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses," he said.
Koh added that Washington will ensure the application of the principles of "distinction" and "proportionality" in the laws of war.
While noting criticism that the use of lethal force against some individuals far removed from the battlefield could amount to an "unlawful extra-judicial killing", he insisted that "a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force."
"Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise," he said.
Alston, the U.N. rapporteur, was far from satisfied with these assurances, however, calling Koh's statement "evasive".
He "was essentially arguing that 'You've got to trust us. I've looked at this very carefully. I'm very sensitive to these issues. And all is well,'" he told an interviewer on 'Democracy Now' Thursday.
"The speech did not provide essential information about the drone/targeted killing programme, including the number and rate of civilian casualties, and the internal oversight and controls on targeted killing, especially within the CIA," said Manes of the ACLU, which has filed a lawsuit to acquire that information.
Tom Parker of Amnesty International was more scathing about Koh's position, suggesting that it was one more concession - along with indefinite detention and special military tribunals for suspected terrorists - to the framework created by Bush's "global war on terror".
"The big issue is where the war is and whether it's a war, and we couldn't disagree more strongly as to the tenor of Koh's comments," he said. "It goes back to the idea of an unbounded global war on terror where terror is hardly defined at all."
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/
Showing posts with label Pentagon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pentagon. Show all posts
Friday, January 7, 2011
Sunday, October 3, 2010
UK Guardian: U.S. Military drones lent to CIA program for "covert" ops in Pakistan
At least British newspaper editors believe nation-states are supposed to declare war formally and publicly before breezing into a so-called demilitarized zone (Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA; not unlike its meta-linguistic cousin, the convenient geographic designation, "Afpak") to drop 300-pound missiles on designated combatants and their families. In the place of working out a deal with an unstable regime operating in the militarized shell of a former dictatorship-avec-parliament (in reference to General Pervez Musharraf). Doesn't mean David Cameron's government is going to want to help impoverished people living in rural Pakistan.
A caveat: Extraordinary Edition would like to editorially acknowledge Islamabad's politicians ... are politicians. Thusly shall they slither and writhe between their constituents and unimaginable power offered them by their counterparts in stronger states. Guardian article appears below.
US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan
The Pentagon and CIA are stepping up America's secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan by secretly diverting aerial drones and missiles from Afghanistan.
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 5:23PM BST 03 Oct 2010
Predator drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained is passed to Islamabad
Predator and Reaper drones have been lent by the US military to the CIA as part of a shift in strategy that underlines the Obama administration's view that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to target Islamist sanctuaries on its own soil.
Tensions between the US and Pakistan have flared after a key route used to supply American troops in Afghanistan was shut after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a Nato helicopter gunship.
On Friday, insurgents attacked fuel tankers in Pakistan in another indication of the increasing vulnerability of Western supply routes.
The additional drones enabled the CIA to increase the number of strikes in Pakistan in September, averaging five strikes a week that month, up from an average of two to three per week.
This increase in drone activity was partly aimed at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. Americans officials believe Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are behind plots potentially aimed at Britain, France and Germany.
American surveillance drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained passed to Islamabad. But Pakistan has formally banned US military operations on its soil, citing the country's sovereignty.
But the CIA has secretly conducted missile strikes launched from drones with Pakistani complicity. This has allowed Pakistan to condemn the strikes, which are strongly opposed by its predominantly anti-American population.
"You have to deal with the sanctuaries," said John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, told the Wall Street Journal. "I've pushed very, very hard with the Pakistanis regarding that." Mr Kerry discussed the issue with Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, in Washington last week.
The secret arrangement between the Pentagon and CIA underlines the consensus in the Obama administration that safe havens on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border is the major obstacle to success in the war in Afghanistan.
"When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," an American official told the Wall Street Journal.
"It's not the only answer, but it's critical to both homeland security and force protection in Afghanistan."
The proposal for the CIA to use military resources emerged during last year's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review. There was resistance from some at the Pentagon who argued that the drones were needed against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Since taking command in Afghanistan in July, Gen. Petraeus has placed greater focus on the tribal areas of Pakistan, according to military and other government officials.
A caveat: Extraordinary Edition would like to editorially acknowledge Islamabad's politicians ... are politicians. Thusly shall they slither and writhe between their constituents and unimaginable power offered them by their counterparts in stronger states. Guardian article appears below.
US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan
The Pentagon and CIA are stepping up America's secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan by secretly diverting aerial drones and missiles from Afghanistan.
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 5:23PM BST 03 Oct 2010
Predator drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained is passed to Islamabad
Predator and Reaper drones have been lent by the US military to the CIA as part of a shift in strategy that underlines the Obama administration's view that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to target Islamist sanctuaries on its own soil.
Tensions between the US and Pakistan have flared after a key route used to supply American troops in Afghanistan was shut after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a Nato helicopter gunship.
On Friday, insurgents attacked fuel tankers in Pakistan in another indication of the increasing vulnerability of Western supply routes.
The additional drones enabled the CIA to increase the number of strikes in Pakistan in September, averaging five strikes a week that month, up from an average of two to three per week.
This increase in drone activity was partly aimed at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. Americans officials believe Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are behind plots potentially aimed at Britain, France and Germany.
American surveillance drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained passed to Islamabad. But Pakistan has formally banned US military operations on its soil, citing the country's sovereignty.
But the CIA has secretly conducted missile strikes launched from drones with Pakistani complicity. This has allowed Pakistan to condemn the strikes, which are strongly opposed by its predominantly anti-American population.
"You have to deal with the sanctuaries," said John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, told the Wall Street Journal. "I've pushed very, very hard with the Pakistanis regarding that." Mr Kerry discussed the issue with Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, in Washington last week.
The secret arrangement between the Pentagon and CIA underlines the consensus in the Obama administration that safe havens on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border is the major obstacle to success in the war in Afghanistan.
"When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," an American official told the Wall Street Journal.
"It's not the only answer, but it's critical to both homeland security and force protection in Afghanistan."
The proposal for the CIA to use military resources emerged during last year's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review. There was resistance from some at the Pentagon who argued that the drones were needed against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Since taking command in Afghanistan in July, Gen. Petraeus has placed greater focus on the tribal areas of Pakistan, according to military and other government officials.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
To be clear, US forces still in Iraq to the tune of 50,000
From Aletho News
The End of Combat My Eye
aletho | September 23, 2010 at 10:33 am | Categories: "Hope and Change", Deception | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-3Zt
Soothing Falsities
By JOHN LaFORGE | Counterpunch | September 23, 2010
The press made a big deal of it. The president even starred in an Oval Office TV show about the “end to U.S. combat” in Iraq, which was announced on August 31. Mr. Obama said he’d fulfilled a promise to end the war.
Obama’s bit of theater cost less than George Bush’s May 1, 2003 shameless declaration of “mission accomplished,” his circus-act-in-military-flight-suit-to-the-flight-deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Yet the president’s speech was just as dishonest.
Just listen to Army Brig. Gen. Jeffery Buchanan, who told National Public Radio for Sept. 19, “Our rules of engagement have not changed.” Indeed, since the “end of combat,” U.S. soldiers have been in at least two fierce shoot outs involving the use of U.S. warplanes. A Sept. 15 battle included “at least” four U.S. helicopter gunships. Another, in Diyala province, saw U.S. planes dropping two 500-pound bombs.
Gen. Buchanan told NPR he “… understands why most people would call this combat.” Most people, general?
Two days after the President’s “combat’s over” routine, Col. Malcolm Frost, the commander of the “advisory” brigade in Diyala, wrote in a note to soldiers’ families, “We will move around Iraq fully protected in armored Strykers and other armored vehicles, wearing full body armor, and fully loaded with ammunition to deal with the enemy …” the New York Times reported.
Col. Frost currently has the same combat soldiers as a combat brigade -- but supplied with 51 “advisers.” Since his unit arrived in Iraq in July, in an “advisory” capacity, two of his soldiers have been killed and 13 wounded. Tell the families of the dead that the war is over.
Another soldier was killed Sept. 16 while detonating seized explosives. If these aren’t combat fatalities, I’m the Queen of Moravia.
Today—among the 50,000 U.S. soldiers still occupying Iraq—there are 4,500 “Special Forces” commandos. These Green Berets, Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and “unconventional” or secret assassination (known for PR purposes as “targeted killing”) squads still storm Iraqi houses and villages at night trying to kill “insurgents” and “suspected members of other armed groups,” according to Baghdad reporters for the Times.
As the GoArmy website says, “missions are … sometimes classified.” You might say that the war in Iraq is now entirely classified, since fighting has been declared over by the Commander-in-Chief himself.
Bombings, firefights, nighttime raids and covert operations might be viewed by most people as combat. But with the feel-good peacewash of presidential speech writers, our military occupation of Iraq can be transformed for the deluded into foreign aid.
Mark Twain described our situation well: “Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those concise, soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter.
The End of Combat My Eye
aletho | September 23, 2010 at 10:33 am | Categories: "Hope and Change", Deception | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-3Zt
Soothing Falsities
By JOHN LaFORGE | Counterpunch | September 23, 2010
The press made a big deal of it. The president even starred in an Oval Office TV show about the “end to U.S. combat” in Iraq, which was announced on August 31. Mr. Obama said he’d fulfilled a promise to end the war.
Obama’s bit of theater cost less than George Bush’s May 1, 2003 shameless declaration of “mission accomplished,” his circus-act-in-military-flight-suit-to-the-flight-deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Yet the president’s speech was just as dishonest.
Just listen to Army Brig. Gen. Jeffery Buchanan, who told National Public Radio for Sept. 19, “Our rules of engagement have not changed.” Indeed, since the “end of combat,” U.S. soldiers have been in at least two fierce shoot outs involving the use of U.S. warplanes. A Sept. 15 battle included “at least” four U.S. helicopter gunships. Another, in Diyala province, saw U.S. planes dropping two 500-pound bombs.
Gen. Buchanan told NPR he “… understands why most people would call this combat.” Most people, general?
Two days after the President’s “combat’s over” routine, Col. Malcolm Frost, the commander of the “advisory” brigade in Diyala, wrote in a note to soldiers’ families, “We will move around Iraq fully protected in armored Strykers and other armored vehicles, wearing full body armor, and fully loaded with ammunition to deal with the enemy …” the New York Times reported.
Col. Frost currently has the same combat soldiers as a combat brigade -- but supplied with 51 “advisers.” Since his unit arrived in Iraq in July, in an “advisory” capacity, two of his soldiers have been killed and 13 wounded. Tell the families of the dead that the war is over.
Another soldier was killed Sept. 16 while detonating seized explosives. If these aren’t combat fatalities, I’m the Queen of Moravia.
Today—among the 50,000 U.S. soldiers still occupying Iraq—there are 4,500 “Special Forces” commandos. These Green Berets, Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and “unconventional” or secret assassination (known for PR purposes as “targeted killing”) squads still storm Iraqi houses and villages at night trying to kill “insurgents” and “suspected members of other armed groups,” according to Baghdad reporters for the Times.
As the GoArmy website says, “missions are … sometimes classified.” You might say that the war in Iraq is now entirely classified, since fighting has been declared over by the Commander-in-Chief himself.
Bombings, firefights, nighttime raids and covert operations might be viewed by most people as combat. But with the feel-good peacewash of presidential speech writers, our military occupation of Iraq can be transformed for the deluded into foreign aid.
Mark Twain described our situation well: “Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those concise, soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Excellent blog post on ABC News tribute to the murderous glory of UAV drones
Nice work from whoever is behind http://www.spider-topihitam.com
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):
"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"
By David Walsh
14 January 2010
American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.
Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.
US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).
Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”
She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.
Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”
Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”
About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”
As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?
As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”
What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).
Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.
On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
U.S. showed Pakistan evidence on militant faction
Reuters story by Adam Entous, reporter and Doina Chiacu, editor.
Haqqani faction in the tribal border region of North Waziristan has been linked by the Pentagon to political violence in May.
"Suicide bombers carrying rockets and grenades launched a brazen predawn attack on the base on May 19, killing an American contractor and wounding nine U.S. troops. About a dozen militants, many wearing suicide vests packed with explosives, were killed, the Pentagon said at the time.
A day earlier, a suicide bomber attacked a military convoy in Kabul, killing 12 Afghan civilians and six foreign troops."
The U.S. is insisting Islamabad place more pressure on its military to seek out members of Haqqani and prevent future attacks.
A dimension of complexity presents itself to Pakistan's leadership as future negotiations might be undermined by military missions against Taliban factions.
"But there are strategic reasons for Pakistan's hesitancy to attack the Haqqanis.
Pakistan sees the group as a strategic asset that will give it influence in any peace settlement in Afghanistan so Islamabad will want those militants on its side."
Insistence by the U.S. with Pakistan follows the May 1 attempted bombing in New York City's Times Square.
Haqqani faction in the tribal border region of North Waziristan has been linked by the Pentagon to political violence in May.
"Suicide bombers carrying rockets and grenades launched a brazen predawn attack on the base on May 19, killing an American contractor and wounding nine U.S. troops. About a dozen militants, many wearing suicide vests packed with explosives, were killed, the Pentagon said at the time.
A day earlier, a suicide bomber attacked a military convoy in Kabul, killing 12 Afghan civilians and six foreign troops."
The U.S. is insisting Islamabad place more pressure on its military to seek out members of Haqqani and prevent future attacks.
A dimension of complexity presents itself to Pakistan's leadership as future negotiations might be undermined by military missions against Taliban factions.
"But there are strategic reasons for Pakistan's hesitancy to attack the Haqqanis.
Pakistan sees the group as a strategic asset that will give it influence in any peace settlement in Afghanistan so Islamabad will want those militants on its side."
Insistence by the U.S. with Pakistan follows the May 1 attempted bombing in New York City's Times Square.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
U.N. Report: U.S. Drones Do More Harm than Good
On a tip from a reader who monitors Newsy.com for multiple reverse angles on the same story appearing in television, print and online news media, this video contributes to opening further the debate on the use of drones in situations listed and described on this site.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
U.N. official urges U.S. to stop CIA drone attacks on al-Qaeda and Taliban
This is the battle of our time, between international law and the laws of strongest nations as determined by the powerful (who wield the strength, economic and political) in those nations. International law's only advantage is unity--bringing the strength of all the other represented nations to bear in opposition to some convenient view of justice held by the most powerful people in the most powerful nations and the economic interests their voices represent. The voices of the great masses governed by both the national and international governing bodies sound outside this nexus of power and are able to push into these powerful entities for recognition and cooperation. The question, then, becomes, "How many of us side with international law (typically framed as human rights), how many with national law (typically property rights framed as individual rights) and to what end?"
The legal community within the national government will make skillfully administered attempts to thwart these arguments of human rights against their unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with anti-personnel bombs and do their best to be dismissive of concerns as people meddling in business that isn't theirs, the business of special operations, classified missions, dangerous individuals and hunting irreparably bad people to their deaths. But the unmanned drone program--not just a robotic eye in the sky with no human operator, but an aircraft armed with 300-pound Hellfire missiles and vision limited to optics, a radio signal and available light--is subject to far more debate than it's been made to undergo since its implementation.
Washington Post story; excerpt appears below
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010
A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that the United States should halt the CIA's drone campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan, charging that the secrecy surrounding the strikes violates the legal principle of international accountability.
But a report by Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal.
He presented a 29-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that focused on "targeted killings" by countries such as Russia and Israel as well as the United States.
"It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict," Alston said in a news release. "The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed."
Alston said some commentators have argued that CIA personnel involved in drone killings are committing war crimes because, unlike the military, they are "unlawful combatants." But, he said, "this argument is not supported" by international humanitarian law.
The legal community within the national government will make skillfully administered attempts to thwart these arguments of human rights against their unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with anti-personnel bombs and do their best to be dismissive of concerns as people meddling in business that isn't theirs, the business of special operations, classified missions, dangerous individuals and hunting irreparably bad people to their deaths. But the unmanned drone program--not just a robotic eye in the sky with no human operator, but an aircraft armed with 300-pound Hellfire missiles and vision limited to optics, a radio signal and available light--is subject to far more debate than it's been made to undergo since its implementation.
Washington Post story; excerpt appears below
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010
A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that the United States should halt the CIA's drone campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan, charging that the secrecy surrounding the strikes violates the legal principle of international accountability.
But a report by Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal.
He presented a 29-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that focused on "targeted killings" by countries such as Russia and Israel as well as the United States.
"It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict," Alston said in a news release. "The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed."
Alston said some commentators have argued that CIA personnel involved in drone killings are committing war crimes because, unlike the military, they are "unlawful combatants." But, he said, "this argument is not supported" by international humanitarian law.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Drones and Democracy
Story on Truthout.org Sunday, May 23, 2010 by Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier
A particularly brutal excerpt ...
"The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 PM, close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic, they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.
But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.
The social worker said that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved."
A particularly brutal excerpt ...
"The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 PM, close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic, they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.
But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.
The social worker said that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved."
Sunday, May 23, 2010
War is making you poor
From Common Dreams May 21
War Is Making You Poor
by Abby Zimet
... Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida introduces the "War Is Making You Poor Act" to highlight the obscene amounts being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan ...
Plus: Hidden Costs of War video
War Is Making You Poor
by Abby Zimet
... Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida introduces the "War Is Making You Poor Act" to highlight the obscene amounts being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan ...
Plus: Hidden Costs of War video
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Aletho News: “What kind of democracy is America, where people do not ask these questions?”
From Aletho News Tuesday ...
“What kind of democracy is America, where people do not ask these questions?”
By Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier | Pulse Media | May 18, 2010
Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) and Josh Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org
Islamabad–On May 12th, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes.
One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, General Secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very difficult circumstances in the area, pressured by both militant groups and the Pakistani government. Six of his colleagues have been killed while reporting in North and South Waziristan. The other man, who asked us not to disclose his name, is from Miranshah city, the epicenter of North Waziristan. He works with the locally based Waziristan Relief Agency, a group of people committed to helping the victims of drone attacks and military actions. “If people need blood or medicine or have to go to Peshawar or some other hospital,” said the social worker, “I’m known for helping them. I also try to arrange funds and contributions.”
Both men emphasized that Pakistan’s government has only a trivial presence in the area. Survivors of drone attacks receive no compensation, and neither the military nor the government investigate consequences of the drone attacks.
“What kind of democracy is America, where people do not ask these questions?”
By Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier | Pulse Media | May 18, 2010
Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) and Josh Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org
Islamabad–On May 12th, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes.
One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, General Secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very difficult circumstances in the area, pressured by both militant groups and the Pakistani government. Six of his colleagues have been killed while reporting in North and South Waziristan. The other man, who asked us not to disclose his name, is from Miranshah city, the epicenter of North Waziristan. He works with the locally based Waziristan Relief Agency, a group of people committed to helping the victims of drone attacks and military actions. “If people need blood or medicine or have to go to Peshawar or some other hospital,” said the social worker, “I’m known for helping them. I also try to arrange funds and contributions.”
Both men emphasized that Pakistan’s government has only a trivial presence in the area. Survivors of drone attacks receive no compensation, and neither the military nor the government investigate consequences of the drone attacks.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Pentagon report on Afghanistan 4/26
From Stars and Stripes
By Jeff Schogol
Stars and Stripes online edition, Wednesday, April 28, 2010
• Read the report (FULL TEXT AVAILABLE; see above link) (PDF, 4MB)
[excerpt]
ARLINGTON, Va. — Despite the addition of more than 50,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan over the past year, there still aren’t enough forces to conduct operations in the majority of key areas, according to a congressionally mandated report released Wednesday on progress in Afghanistan.
Coalition forces have decided to focus their efforts on 121 key districts in Afghanistan, but right now, NATO has enough forces to operate in only 48 of those districts, the report said.
There are currently 86,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, up from about 30,000 when President Barack Obama took office. By August, there will be 98,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
With the rest of the U.S. and foreign partner troops that will arrive in Afghanistan this year, coalition and Afghan security forces will be able to focus on all 121 districts "over coming months," a senior Defense official said Wednesday, declining to be more specific.
Also, from Inter Press Service (IPS)
Pentagon Doubts Grow on McChrystal War Plan
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
[excerpt]
WASHINGTON, May 10, 2010 (IPS) - Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.
Scepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war issued Apr. 26 assessed the progress of the campaign in Marja. Now, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai begins a four-day round of consultations with President Barack Obama and other senior U.S. officials here this week, the new report has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in the Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius.
The senior military officer criticised McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marja campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius.
The same military official is also quoted as pointing out that parts of Helmand that were supposed to have been cleared by the offensive in February and March are in fact still under Taliban control and that Afghan government performance in the wake of the offensive had been disappointing, according to Ignatius.
The outlook at the Pentagon and the White House on the nascent Kandahar offensive is also pessimistic, judging from the comment to Ignatius by an unnamed "senior administration official". The official told Ignatius the operation is "still a work in progress", observing that McChrystal's command was still trying to decide how much of the local government the military could "salvage" and how much "you have to rebuild".
By Jeff Schogol
Stars and Stripes online edition, Wednesday, April 28, 2010
• Read the report (FULL TEXT AVAILABLE; see above link) (PDF, 4MB)
[excerpt]
ARLINGTON, Va. — Despite the addition of more than 50,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan over the past year, there still aren’t enough forces to conduct operations in the majority of key areas, according to a congressionally mandated report released Wednesday on progress in Afghanistan.
Coalition forces have decided to focus their efforts on 121 key districts in Afghanistan, but right now, NATO has enough forces to operate in only 48 of those districts, the report said.
There are currently 86,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, up from about 30,000 when President Barack Obama took office. By August, there will be 98,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
With the rest of the U.S. and foreign partner troops that will arrive in Afghanistan this year, coalition and Afghan security forces will be able to focus on all 121 districts "over coming months," a senior Defense official said Wednesday, declining to be more specific.
Also, from Inter Press Service (IPS)
Pentagon Doubts Grow on McChrystal War Plan
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
[excerpt]
WASHINGTON, May 10, 2010 (IPS) - Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.
Scepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war issued Apr. 26 assessed the progress of the campaign in Marja. Now, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai begins a four-day round of consultations with President Barack Obama and other senior U.S. officials here this week, the new report has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in the Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius.
The senior military officer criticised McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marja campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius.
The same military official is also quoted as pointing out that parts of Helmand that were supposed to have been cleared by the offensive in February and March are in fact still under Taliban control and that Afghan government performance in the wake of the offensive had been disappointing, according to Ignatius.
The outlook at the Pentagon and the White House on the nascent Kandahar offensive is also pessimistic, judging from the comment to Ignatius by an unnamed "senior administration official". The official told Ignatius the operation is "still a work in progress", observing that McChrystal's command was still trying to decide how much of the local government the military could "salvage" and how much "you have to rebuild".
Friday, May 7, 2010
Addiction to conflict marks a choice between justice and empire
Extraordinary Edition story by Collin Friday, May 7
See also: "Number of Soldiers Seeking Opiate Abuse Treatment Skyrockets" by Judson Berger for FOX News; American Addiction by Noam Chomsky, AK Press audio, 2001; Gabriel Kolko for Counterpunch May 2, "Why the U.S. still doesn't get the message: 35 years since the fall of Saigon"
The more time passes in Afghanistan, the more it's resembling Vietnam. Let's just say I grew up with a Vietnam historian around the house. I used to haul a lot of firewood for him. He would tell me how marijuana grew wild in Vietnam, plus it was the '60s so all kinds of soldiers (poor kids) were experimenting. Even some of your all-American athlete types.
Having nothing to do with wild herb, but everything to do with openness to experimentation he said everywhere soldiers off duty, at a base were taking LSD together. Having nothing to do with getting treatment for opiate addiction, groups of soldiers would drop acid. In the jungle on a hot, wet and otherwise eventless evening followed the next day by the work of war and terror of uncertainty. Paradise; escape from battlefield stress and homesickness, right? Then mortars would come from the jungle.
My dad experienced this firsthand, of course. The soldiers who dropped acid together would huddle close to each other because they didn't experience an alert response to the mortar attack and scatter to prevent being targeted and engage a strategy to beat the odds and stay alive. My dad was at the base when a whole tent filled with soldiers on acid were killed together by mortar fire.
Vietnam was pointless. Not an exercise in the expansion of democracy. Just destroying the lives of everyone in Southeast Asia as an experiment in aiming the U.S. war machine at something on the edge of the Soviet Empire to see what was possible. Afghanistan is pointless. In Iraq at least the empire is stealing petroleum rights and export dollars. Pernicious, illegal, but it's a purpose. Machiavelli wasn't a nihilist: act to achieve gain in the face of a morality imposed by outside sources. Afghanistan is strategic presence of empire in the Middle East and the creation and development of some post-Cold War specter to chase (see: Gore Vidal, George Orwell) and at which to aim the apparatus of empire, like in Vietnam. Enormous shares of Western resources devoted to the frontier of empire in the form of prolonged military action.
The best thing the economic crisis has demonstrated is to starkly underline how stupid this is. We're participating in the destruction of the quality of life here and abroad simultaneously while absurdly pretending the opposite is developing before our eyes so long as we are patient enough to watch the benefits of consolidated private wealth reach those, in a cruel paradox (and a dubious swindle), it will never reach.
Is the addiction to narcotics any different from addiction to petroleum in the developed nations? Is the role of driving and access to industrial products in the fight against climate change any different whatsoever from the role addiction plays in the refusal to alter course in order to achieve preferable ends? Are any of us capable of breaking the cycle without being completely cut off from the object of obsession?
The end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan will be a victory for rank-and-file soldiers (who can just as easily be paid to provide domestic defense or take a job in an expanding economy where military expenditure is returned to communities at home), for rank-and-file workers and for development of infrastructure and fewer reasons for the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Pakistan to turn against each other.
The end of the U.S. war in Iraq is an issue of justice unrelated to the prosecution of war in Afghanistan except for the convenient location of U.S. military resources in the Middle East. The lies that led U.S. military resources there were illegal. To their credit, it is incredible how people who made these decisions and told lies that destroyed other societies with U.S. capital have completely avoided accountability and justice. The path of history we're seeing play out with the current economic crisis and mythology of "Too Big to Fail" is synonymous, and what we can expect when we refuse to defend ourselves against mortal enemies who call themselves our friends with a smile and a handshake.
As for opiate addiction and recovery, scholars like Noam Chomsky have maintained for more than a decade these economies are rooted in serious substance abuse problems in the centers of developed nations. Treatment at home equates to the end of the drug trade in colonized regions where the drugs are produced industrially. The fatigued War on Drugs has essentially served as a means to ignore what research has demonstrated consistently. The solution to problems of violence and endemic corruption resulting from illegal trade lies in treating the addictions that breathe life into those problems.
Meanwhile, to trust the U.S. military, the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon to solve the situation in Afghanistan is near the decision to help an addict kick by handing him $400 cash. To hope it will solve itself organically by the time scheduled for withdrawal (pardon the dark pun) is akin to a decision to use echinacea, goldenseal, zinc and vitamin C to treat heroin addiction.
See also: "Number of Soldiers Seeking Opiate Abuse Treatment Skyrockets" by Judson Berger for FOX News; American Addiction by Noam Chomsky, AK Press audio, 2001; Gabriel Kolko for Counterpunch May 2, "Why the U.S. still doesn't get the message: 35 years since the fall of Saigon"
The more time passes in Afghanistan, the more it's resembling Vietnam. Let's just say I grew up with a Vietnam historian around the house. I used to haul a lot of firewood for him. He would tell me how marijuana grew wild in Vietnam, plus it was the '60s so all kinds of soldiers (poor kids) were experimenting. Even some of your all-American athlete types.
Having nothing to do with wild herb, but everything to do with openness to experimentation he said everywhere soldiers off duty, at a base were taking LSD together. Having nothing to do with getting treatment for opiate addiction, groups of soldiers would drop acid. In the jungle on a hot, wet and otherwise eventless evening followed the next day by the work of war and terror of uncertainty. Paradise; escape from battlefield stress and homesickness, right? Then mortars would come from the jungle.
My dad experienced this firsthand, of course. The soldiers who dropped acid together would huddle close to each other because they didn't experience an alert response to the mortar attack and scatter to prevent being targeted and engage a strategy to beat the odds and stay alive. My dad was at the base when a whole tent filled with soldiers on acid were killed together by mortar fire.
Vietnam was pointless. Not an exercise in the expansion of democracy. Just destroying the lives of everyone in Southeast Asia as an experiment in aiming the U.S. war machine at something on the edge of the Soviet Empire to see what was possible. Afghanistan is pointless. In Iraq at least the empire is stealing petroleum rights and export dollars. Pernicious, illegal, but it's a purpose. Machiavelli wasn't a nihilist: act to achieve gain in the face of a morality imposed by outside sources. Afghanistan is strategic presence of empire in the Middle East and the creation and development of some post-Cold War specter to chase (see: Gore Vidal, George Orwell) and at which to aim the apparatus of empire, like in Vietnam. Enormous shares of Western resources devoted to the frontier of empire in the form of prolonged military action.
The best thing the economic crisis has demonstrated is to starkly underline how stupid this is. We're participating in the destruction of the quality of life here and abroad simultaneously while absurdly pretending the opposite is developing before our eyes so long as we are patient enough to watch the benefits of consolidated private wealth reach those, in a cruel paradox (and a dubious swindle), it will never reach.
Is the addiction to narcotics any different from addiction to petroleum in the developed nations? Is the role of driving and access to industrial products in the fight against climate change any different whatsoever from the role addiction plays in the refusal to alter course in order to achieve preferable ends? Are any of us capable of breaking the cycle without being completely cut off from the object of obsession?
The end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan will be a victory for rank-and-file soldiers (who can just as easily be paid to provide domestic defense or take a job in an expanding economy where military expenditure is returned to communities at home), for rank-and-file workers and for development of infrastructure and fewer reasons for the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Pakistan to turn against each other.
The end of the U.S. war in Iraq is an issue of justice unrelated to the prosecution of war in Afghanistan except for the convenient location of U.S. military resources in the Middle East. The lies that led U.S. military resources there were illegal. To their credit, it is incredible how people who made these decisions and told lies that destroyed other societies with U.S. capital have completely avoided accountability and justice. The path of history we're seeing play out with the current economic crisis and mythology of "Too Big to Fail" is synonymous, and what we can expect when we refuse to defend ourselves against mortal enemies who call themselves our friends with a smile and a handshake.
As for opiate addiction and recovery, scholars like Noam Chomsky have maintained for more than a decade these economies are rooted in serious substance abuse problems in the centers of developed nations. Treatment at home equates to the end of the drug trade in colonized regions where the drugs are produced industrially. The fatigued War on Drugs has essentially served as a means to ignore what research has demonstrated consistently. The solution to problems of violence and endemic corruption resulting from illegal trade lies in treating the addictions that breathe life into those problems.
Meanwhile, to trust the U.S. military, the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon to solve the situation in Afghanistan is near the decision to help an addict kick by handing him $400 cash. To hope it will solve itself organically by the time scheduled for withdrawal (pardon the dark pun) is akin to a decision to use echinacea, goldenseal, zinc and vitamin C to treat heroin addiction.
US to expand Pakistan drone strikes
The US has reportedly carried out more than 100 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2008
Al Jazeera story May 6, 2010 13:07 GMT
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been granted approval by the US government to expand drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions in a move to step up military operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, officials have said.
Federal lawyers backed the measures on grounds of self-defence to counter threats the fighters pose to US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan and the United States as a whole, according to authorities.
The US announced on Wednesday that targets will now include low-level combatants, even if their identities are not known.
Barack Obama, the US president, had previously said drone strikes were necessary to "take out high-level terrorist targets".
Conflicting figures
"Targets are chosen with extreme care, factoring in concepts like necessity, proportionality, and an absolute obligation to minimise loss of innocent life and property damage," a US counterterrorism official said.
But the numbers show that more than 90 per cent of the 500 people killed by drones since mid-2008 are lower-level fighters, raising questions about how much the CIA knows about the targets, experts said.
Only 14 of those killed are considered by experts to have been high ranking members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other groups.
"Just because they are not big names it does not mean they do not kill. They do," the counterterrorism official said.
The US tally of combatant and non-combatant casualties is sharply lower than some Pakistani press accounts, which have estimated civilian deaths alone at more than 600.
Analysts have said that accurately estimating the number of civilian deaths was difficult, if not impossible.
"It is unclear how you define who is a militant and who is a militant leader," Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said.
Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "It is impossible to assess the accuracy of government figures, unattributed to a named official, without information about what kind of information they are based on, how the government defines 'militants' and how it distinguishes them from civilians."
US message
Former intelligence officials acknowledged that in many, if not most cases, the CIA had little information about those killed in the strikes.
Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University, said the CIA's goal in targeting was to "demoralise the rank and file".
"The message is: 'If you go to these camps, you're going to be killed,'" he added.
Critics say the expanded US strikes raise legal as well as security concerns amid signs that Faisal Shahzad, the suspect behind the attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square on Saturday, had ties to the Pakistani Taliban movement, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
CIA-operated drones have frequently targeted the group over the past year in Pakistan, and its members have vowed to avenge strikes that have killed several of their leaders and commanders.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, told CBS television channel that the US should not be surprised if anti-government fighters try to carry out more attacks.
"They're not going to sort of sit and welcome you [to] sort of eliminate them. They're going to fight back," Qureshi said.
Al Jazeera story May 6, 2010 13:07 GMT
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been granted approval by the US government to expand drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions in a move to step up military operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, officials have said.
Federal lawyers backed the measures on grounds of self-defence to counter threats the fighters pose to US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan and the United States as a whole, according to authorities.
The US announced on Wednesday that targets will now include low-level combatants, even if their identities are not known.
Barack Obama, the US president, had previously said drone strikes were necessary to "take out high-level terrorist targets".
Conflicting figures
"Targets are chosen with extreme care, factoring in concepts like necessity, proportionality, and an absolute obligation to minimise loss of innocent life and property damage," a US counterterrorism official said.
But the numbers show that more than 90 per cent of the 500 people killed by drones since mid-2008 are lower-level fighters, raising questions about how much the CIA knows about the targets, experts said.
Only 14 of those killed are considered by experts to have been high ranking members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other groups.
"Just because they are not big names it does not mean they do not kill. They do," the counterterrorism official said.
The US tally of combatant and non-combatant casualties is sharply lower than some Pakistani press accounts, which have estimated civilian deaths alone at more than 600.
Analysts have said that accurately estimating the number of civilian deaths was difficult, if not impossible.
"It is unclear how you define who is a militant and who is a militant leader," Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said.
Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "It is impossible to assess the accuracy of government figures, unattributed to a named official, without information about what kind of information they are based on, how the government defines 'militants' and how it distinguishes them from civilians."
US message
Former intelligence officials acknowledged that in many, if not most cases, the CIA had little information about those killed in the strikes.
Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University, said the CIA's goal in targeting was to "demoralise the rank and file".
"The message is: 'If you go to these camps, you're going to be killed,'" he added.
Critics say the expanded US strikes raise legal as well as security concerns amid signs that Faisal Shahzad, the suspect behind the attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square on Saturday, had ties to the Pakistani Taliban movement, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
CIA-operated drones have frequently targeted the group over the past year in Pakistan, and its members have vowed to avenge strikes that have killed several of their leaders and commanders.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, told CBS television channel that the US should not be surprised if anti-government fighters try to carry out more attacks.
"They're not going to sort of sit and welcome you [to] sort of eliminate them. They're going to fight back," Qureshi said.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Why the U.S. still doesn't get the message: 35 years since the fall of Saigon
Why the U.S. Still Doesn't Get the Message
35 Years Since the Fall of Saigon
By Gabriel Kolko (author of "Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914," "Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism," "Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience" and "World in Crisis."
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
This piece is available on Znet and originally hails from Counterpunch
The United States' wars have always been very expensive and capital-intensive, fought with the most modern weapons available and assuming a modern, concentrated enemy such as the Soviet Union. The ever-growing Pentagon budget is virtually the only issue both Republicans and Democrats agree upon. But there are major economic and social liabilities in increasingly expensive, protracted wars, and these-as in the case of Vietnam-eventually proved decisive.
The U.S. wars since 1950 have been against decentralized enemies in situations without clearly defined fronts, as exist in conventional wars. Faced with high firepower, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, even Iraq, America's adversaries disperse - they fight from caves, behind jungle foliage, etc.,-- using cheap, relatively primitive military technology against the most advanced U.S. artillery, tanks, helicopters, and air power. In the end, its adversaries' patience and ingenuity, and willingness to make sacrifices, succeed in winning wars, not battles. Its enemies never stand and fight on U.S. terms, offering targets. The war in Vietnam was very protracted and expensive, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also prolonged-and increasingly a political liability to the party in power in Washington. This has repeatedly illustrated the limits of American power, and the Korean war established the first precedent.
When the Korean war ended, the U.S. leaders swore they would never fight another land war in Asia. The Korean war was fought to a draw, basically a defeat for U.S. objectives to reunite the country. Vietnam proved yet again that the U.S. could not win a land war-and it failed entirely there, at least in the military sense. Their ultimate success was due to the confusion of the Vietnamese Communists themselves, not the success of the Saigon regime or American arms. The U.S. has always been vulnerable militarily precisely because its enemies have been primarily poor and compelled the adapt to the limits of their power.
After its defeat in Vietnam in 1975 the U.S. leaders once again resolved yet again never to fight a land war without massive military power from the inception of a conflict and the support of the American people - which gradually eroded during the Vietnam war. The Weinberger doctrine in 1984 enshrined this principle. The U.S. has won wars against small, relatively weak enemies, as in Nicaragua, but in both Iraq and Afghanistan it has made the mistakes of the Korea and Vietnam wars all over again. It still wishes to be the "indispensable power," to quote former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, but it cannot win the victories it covets. Like a drunken person, it no longer controls itself, its environments, or makes its actions conform to its perceptions. It is therefore a danger both to itself and the world.
Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis.
35 Years Since the Fall of Saigon
By Gabriel Kolko (author of "Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914," "Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism," "Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience" and "World in Crisis."
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
This piece is available on Znet and originally hails from Counterpunch
The United States' wars have always been very expensive and capital-intensive, fought with the most modern weapons available and assuming a modern, concentrated enemy such as the Soviet Union. The ever-growing Pentagon budget is virtually the only issue both Republicans and Democrats agree upon. But there are major economic and social liabilities in increasingly expensive, protracted wars, and these-as in the case of Vietnam-eventually proved decisive.
The U.S. wars since 1950 have been against decentralized enemies in situations without clearly defined fronts, as exist in conventional wars. Faced with high firepower, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, even Iraq, America's adversaries disperse - they fight from caves, behind jungle foliage, etc.,-- using cheap, relatively primitive military technology against the most advanced U.S. artillery, tanks, helicopters, and air power. In the end, its adversaries' patience and ingenuity, and willingness to make sacrifices, succeed in winning wars, not battles. Its enemies never stand and fight on U.S. terms, offering targets. The war in Vietnam was very protracted and expensive, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also prolonged-and increasingly a political liability to the party in power in Washington. This has repeatedly illustrated the limits of American power, and the Korean war established the first precedent.
When the Korean war ended, the U.S. leaders swore they would never fight another land war in Asia. The Korean war was fought to a draw, basically a defeat for U.S. objectives to reunite the country. Vietnam proved yet again that the U.S. could not win a land war-and it failed entirely there, at least in the military sense. Their ultimate success was due to the confusion of the Vietnamese Communists themselves, not the success of the Saigon regime or American arms. The U.S. has always been vulnerable militarily precisely because its enemies have been primarily poor and compelled the adapt to the limits of their power.
After its defeat in Vietnam in 1975 the U.S. leaders once again resolved yet again never to fight a land war without massive military power from the inception of a conflict and the support of the American people - which gradually eroded during the Vietnam war. The Weinberger doctrine in 1984 enshrined this principle. The U.S. has won wars against small, relatively weak enemies, as in Nicaragua, but in both Iraq and Afghanistan it has made the mistakes of the Korea and Vietnam wars all over again. It still wishes to be the "indispensable power," to quote former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, but it cannot win the victories it covets. Like a drunken person, it no longer controls itself, its environments, or makes its actions conform to its perceptions. It is therefore a danger both to itself and the world.
Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Glenn Greenwald on war propaganda, Afghanistan and the NY Times
Salon.com article posted to commondreams.org
by Glenn Greenwald April 28, 2010
Excerpt--The Independent declared on February 9, 2010, that General McChrystal wants the Marjah offensive to "be one of the most significant in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001" and, of Obama's war strategy, said that "Marjah looks like being its first major -- and possibly decisive -- test." The BBC quoted a NATO official who proclaimed that Marjah "was 'probably the definitive operation' of the counter-insurgency strategy" and "this operation could potentially define the tipping point, the crucial momentum aspect in the counter-insurgency." Time helpfully informed us that "U.S. officials believe it will mark a turning point in the war."
Now that that "make-or-break decisive test" has failed (or, at best, has produced very muddled outcomes), did the Government and media follow through and declare the war effort broken and the strategy a failure? No; they just pretend it never happened and declare the next, latest, glorious Battle the real "make-or-break decisive test" -- until that one fails and the next one is portrayed that way, in an endless tidal wave of war propaganda intended to justify our staying for as long as we want, no matter how pointless and counter-productive it is.
commondreams.org
by Glenn Greenwald April 28, 2010
Excerpt--The Independent declared on February 9, 2010, that General McChrystal wants the Marjah offensive to "be one of the most significant in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001" and, of Obama's war strategy, said that "Marjah looks like being its first major -- and possibly decisive -- test." The BBC quoted a NATO official who proclaimed that Marjah "was 'probably the definitive operation' of the counter-insurgency strategy" and "this operation could potentially define the tipping point, the crucial momentum aspect in the counter-insurgency." Time helpfully informed us that "U.S. officials believe it will mark a turning point in the war."
Now that that "make-or-break decisive test" has failed (or, at best, has produced very muddled outcomes), did the Government and media follow through and declare the war effort broken and the strategy a failure? No; they just pretend it never happened and declare the next, latest, glorious Battle the real "make-or-break decisive test" -- until that one fails and the next one is portrayed that way, in an endless tidal wave of war propaganda intended to justify our staying for as long as we want, no matter how pointless and counter-productive it is.
commondreams.org
Morale among troops in Afghanistan: a non-embed story
Joyce M. Davis, writing for the Pennsylvania Patriot-News in Mechanicsburg (pennlive.com), struck up an illuminating conversation with a soldier returning from the battlefields near Kandahar.
"As troop morale drops, Afghanistan war isn't encouraging" April 28, 2010
... “Morale stinks, ma’am,” she said. “We don’t know why we’re there.”
A modern soldier is a laborer. As you read, try to think of a job you had where you couldn't figure out what the bosses were trying to accomplish or why they insisted upon going about it the way they did ... then think of David Patreus and Stanley McChrystal in the way you would think of, say, Lloyd Blankfein and Richard Fuld.
Joyce M. Davis/Patriot-News
"As troop morale drops, Afghanistan war isn't encouraging" April 28, 2010
... “Morale stinks, ma’am,” she said. “We don’t know why we’re there.”
A modern soldier is a laborer. As you read, try to think of a job you had where you couldn't figure out what the bosses were trying to accomplish or why they insisted upon going about it the way they did ... then think of David Patreus and Stanley McChrystal in the way you would think of, say, Lloyd Blankfein and Richard Fuld.
Joyce M. Davis/Patriot-News
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Pakistan, Drones and the Unpopularity of the U.S. War in Afghanistan
Amid the climate of escalation and apparent shuffling of tactics in the Pentagon today, most folks aren't noticing that the U.S. War in Afghanistan is largely run by the CIA, that its frequently being fought in a destabilized Pakistan where the conventions of international conflict (Congressional declaration of war, official status as an ally downgraded to enemy, some kind of responsibility informally but publicly pinned on leader of offending nation, U.S. Military announcements of strategy for achievement of objectives in target region and an outline of those objectives ... ) are being flouted by both invader and invaded, and civilian contractors, namely a U.S. Corporation whose employees and officers under investigation by the FBI for murder and corruption formerly known as Blackwater, appear to be running the operation.
The question I would be asking if I was, say, a proud American parent of a U.S. soldier, "Are our soldiers there just to provide cover for the CIA operation of drone strikes into Pakistan?" Is the CIA running intelligence missions under the rifle sights of U.S. sentries in crowded markets in southern Afghanistan so that Blackwater can fly remote controlled missle drones in violation of international law and the conventions of combat to murder four to six civilians--mostly women and children--for each military target, probably Al Qaeda, probably not Osama Bin Laden?
Furthermore, with embedded media present under strict agreements with the Pentagon, can U.S. and other major media outlets even begin to address let alone answer this question?
The question I would be asking if I was, say, a proud American parent of a U.S. soldier, "Are our soldiers there just to provide cover for the CIA operation of drone strikes into Pakistan?" Is the CIA running intelligence missions under the rifle sights of U.S. sentries in crowded markets in southern Afghanistan so that Blackwater can fly remote controlled missle drones in violation of international law and the conventions of combat to murder four to six civilians--mostly women and children--for each military target, probably Al Qaeda, probably not Osama Bin Laden?
Furthermore, with embedded media present under strict agreements with the Pentagon, can U.S. and other major media outlets even begin to address let alone answer this question?
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