Category: War

How Obama’s Drone War Is Hurting Us

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We are creating an entire generation who hates us and wants us dead:

Americans wouldn’t normally hear about how poor Yemeni villagers reacted to a drone strike. But Wessab is the home village of Farea al-Muslimi, a 22-year-old democracy activist who is among the most pro-American voices in Yemen. “I don’t know if there is anyone on earth that feels more thankful to America than me,” he said Tuesday in testimony before a Senate committee. “In my heart, I know I can only repay the opportunities, friendship, warmth, and exposure your country provided me by being their ambassadors to Yemenis for the rest of my life.”

………

Despite all his reporting, he never imagined his own village, which doesn’t even register on Google Maps, could be the site of an American drone strike. “In the past, most of Wessab’s villagers knew little about the United States,” he said. “My stories about my experiences in America, my American friends, and the American values that I saw for myself helped the villagers I talked to understand the America that I know and love. Now, however, when they think of America they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads ready to fire missiles at any time. I personally don’t even know if it is safe for me to go back to Wessab because I am someone who people in my village associate with America and its values.” What American policymakers need to understand, he added, is that “Wessab first experienced America through the terror of a drone strike. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.”

Unfortunately, most of our state security apparatus cannot conceive anything beyond eternal war, eternally overpriced weapons systems, and killing brown people.

Read the rest.

Obama agrees to release legal memos on Awlaki drone strike – latimes.com

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So, now that Michale Isikoff has released a leaked Department of Justice memo which summarized their legal opinion on drone strikes, it basically said that Obama can kill anyone he wants at any time, the White House has agreed top release the actual legal opinion to Congress:

President Obama, who has championed lethal drone strikes as a major part of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, bowed to pressure Wednesday and agreed to allow the Senate and House intelligence committees to review classified legal memos used to justify a drone strike against a U.S. citizen in Yemen in 2011.

Senators had demanded for months to see the Justice Department opinions that provided the White House legal authority to order the targeted killing of Anwar Awlaki, a New Mexico native who became an Al Qaeda leader.

Complaints by several Democrats over not receiving the documents had cast a shadow on the Senate confirmation hearing Thursday of John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism advisor tapped to be CIA director.

An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified material, described the decision to release the classified Office of Legal Counsel material as “part of the president’s ongoing commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters.”

“I think this is an encouraging first step,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Intelligence Committee and was among those who had publicly complained about being denied access to the material. He said Americans must “understand the rules under which a president may make these consequential decisions.”

Wyden said Obama had “assured me that all of the documents concerning the legal opinions on the targeted killing of Americans will immediately be made available” to the intelligence committees.

By “made available” I’m sure that they mean that the Congressmen can look at it in a locked room, take no notes, and not discuss it with their staff.

That’s how they roll.

They Want Us Gone, Let’s Leave

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The Afghans want us gone:

Days after Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Obama seemed to agree on the future role of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a division has emerged over one of the American military’s most prized defense programs.

Top Afghan officials said Obama’s pledge last week to remove U.S. troops from Afghan villages should apply to Special Operations forces charged with training the Afghan Local Police. But U.S. officials said they assumed that the policy would apply only to traditional military operations and would include an exemption for the police trainers, whose mission they see as critical to security throughout Afghanistan.

The dispute underscored just how difficult negotiations over a long-term security partnership could be during the next year. The disagreement, like others before it, centers on the fundamental question of what will keep Afghans safe: U.S. officials say the local police program thwarts insurgents, but Karzai insists that it invites attacks.

The broader Afghan interpretation of the troop withdrawal, which Afghan officials said they believed would happen within weeks, would derail much of the Special Operations forces’ mission in Afghanistan and halt the expansion of the fastest-
growing Afghan security force, one that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

We’ve lost the war. Our allies don’t want want us there any more. It’s just time to go.

Yes, We Are at War With Pakistan

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At the NATO summit in Chicago, Obama refused to talk with Pakistani President Zardary:

The rift between the US and Pakistan deepened on Monday as the Nato summit in Chicago broke up without a deal on Afghanistan supply routes.

Barack Obama, at a press conference to wind up the summit, made no attempt to conceal his exasperation, issuing a pointed warning to Pakistan it was in its wider interest to work with the US to avoid being “consumed” by extremists.

Seldom in recent years have the tensions between Washington and Islamabad been on public show to the extent as at the Chicago, overshadowing the two-day Nato summit.

The main point of friction is Pakistan’s closure of Nato supply routes to Afghanistan in protest over drone attacks and a US air strike in November that killed two dozen Pakistani troops.

Obama refused to make time during the two-day summit to see the Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari for a face-to-face bilateral meeting. In a press conference, Obama made a point of stressing that the only exchange he had with his Pakistani counterpart was short. “Very brief, as we were walking into the summit,” Obama said.

The US president said he “did not want to paper over the cracks” and that there has been tension between the US-led international force in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the last few months.

I’m not sure if this is a ramping up of tension, or a recognition by Obama that the military is running the show.

But the fact is that we are effectively at war with a significant portion of the Pakistani state security apparatus, which is actively destabilizing Afghanistan because they see Karzai as being to favorably disposed toward India.

Karazai Wants Foreign Troops to Stand Down

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You know, this whole withdrawing from this clusterf%$# with honor does NOT seem to be working:

President Hamid Karzai insisted Thursday that the United States confine its troops to major bases in Afghanistan by next year as the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks with the Americans, both of which served to complicate the Obama administration’s plans for an orderly exit from the country.

Mr. Karzai’s abrupt planning shift was at odds with a pledge offered just hours earlier by President Obama to stick to a 2014 withdrawal schedule for troops in Afghanistan. It also ran up against the Pentagon’s stark assessment that Afghan security forces were not yet ready to take over control of the country.

Mr. Karzai’s surprise announcement, which would confine American troops to their bases a year earlier than Mr. Obama proposed, was initially made at a Thursday meeting with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who spent a fraught two days here apologizing in person to the Afghan president for the massacre of civilians by an American soldier last Sunday at a village in Kandahar Province. Upon Mr. Panetta’s arrival, an Afghan interpreter working for coalition forces crashed a stolen pickup truck near his plane.

Further fraying the United States’ efforts to preserve some degree of control over its exit strategy from Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents announced Thursday that they had broken off preliminary peace talks with the Americans. While the move may have been coincidental, it imperiled another crucial element of the American exit strategy in Afghanistan — brokering peace talks between insurgents and the government.

This is like Vietnam all over again. We know we have to leave, but we have to do it slowly, because we cannot afford to look like we were beaten … again.

We’ve been beaten.  Get the f%$# out of Dodge.

Obama’s Assassination Catch-22

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If you are targeted by this administration for assassination, then only you can challenge this in court, but the Obama administration will sniff out your communications with your lawyers in order to find and kill you:

On Saturday in Somalia, the U.S. fired missiles from a drone and killed the 27-year-old Lebanon-born, ex-British citizen Bilal el-Berjawi. His wife had given birth 24 hours earlier and the speculation is that the U.S. located him when his wife called to give him the news. Roughly one year ago, El-Berjawi was stripped of his British citizenship, obtained when his family moved to that country when he was an infant, through the use of a 2006 British anti-Terrorism law — passed after the London subway bombing — that the current government is using with increasing frequency to strip alleged Terrorists with dual nationality of their British citizenship (while providing no explanation for that act). El-Berjawi’s family vehemently denies that he is involved with Terrorism, but he was never able to appeal the decree against him for this reason:

Berjawi is understood to have sought to appeal against the order, but lawyers representing his family were unable to take instructions from him amid concerns that any telephone contact could precipitate a drone attack.

Obviously, those concerns were valid. So first the U.S. tries to assassinate people, then it causes legal rulings against them to be issued because the individuals, fearing for their life, are unable to defend themselves. Meanwhile, no explanation or evidence is provided for either the adverse government act or the assassination: it is simply secretly decreed and thus shall it be.

Exactly the same thing happened with U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki. When the ACLU and CCR, representing Awlaki’s father, sued President Obama asking a federal court to enjoin the President from killing his American son without a trial, the Obama DOJ insisted (and the court ultimately accepted) that Awlaki himself must sue on his own behalf. Obviously, that was impossible given that the Obama administration was admittedly trying to kill him and surely would have done so the minute he stuck his head up to contact lawyers (indeed, the U.S. tried to kill him each time they thought they had located him, and then finally succeeded). So again in the Awlaki case: the U.S. targets someone for death, and then their inability to defend themselves is used as a weapon to deny their legal rights.

This is deeply repulsive, and, unfortunately, it is the new normal, and the next president, whether it be in 2012 or 2016, will accept this and extend these policies, just as Obama has, and things will get worse again.

And No Carriers, What a Bummer

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It looks like the Latin American customs union, Mercosur, has declared that Falklands Islands flagged ships are banned from their ports, which amounts to a (rather porous) blockade:

Argentines call them las Malvinas. The British call them the Falklands. In news jargon, many assume that to use one name over the other is to take a side, mostly because these islands are the source of an acrimonious dispute that led to a non-declared war between the two countries in 1982.

Enter Mercosur, the trade agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – with Chile as one of the associated member states – which, a week ago, decided to ban ships that fly the Falklands flag from their ports. The measure, a blockade in simple terms, was taken to show solidarity with Argentina on the issue.

Of course, things are different from 1982.

The British no longer have any aircraft carriers, and won’t for many years to come, and the Chinese are explicitly endorsing the Argentine claim.

Truth be told, the only Falkland’s flagged ships out there are probably a few fishing boats, but the fact is that if this escalates, there is very little that the UK can do to to maintain its controls over the islands.

Truth be told, I think that any escalation would come from the British side, as Cameron, remembering Thatcher’s electoral benefit from the earlier war, will try to make a similar play for electorate.

I Know that this is Stating the Obvious……

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Barack Obama did not “Keep his promise” to get out of Iraq.

We still have thousands or armed mercenaries contractors, and Obama did not pull the troops out voluntarily.

The Iraqis kicked us out, and Obama wanted to stay.

He wanted thousands of troops, a number of bases, to remain in Iraq.

As I’ve said before, Obama claims to oppose “stupid wars”, but he refuses to acknowledge that any war can be stupid.”

Iran Claims to Have Brought Down an RQ-170 Stealthy UAV

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The Iranians are claiming that they brought down the Beast of Kandahar:

The official Iran Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) is reporting that national military forces have shot down a US Lockheed Martin RQ-170 stealth unmanned air system. The aircraft sustained “little damage” and is in the possession of the Iranian military, IRNA reports.

Iranian news agency claims always have to be taken with some degree of scepticism.

The credibility of the online version of the IRNA article is not helped by the accompanying photo. The US Air Force has never released an official picture of the RQ-170, but we can be sure the the UAV in the IRNA article is not it. The IRNA photo instead is a stock image of the BAE Systems Raven delta wing demonstrator, an aircraft that was retired more than seven years ago.

NATO is admitting that it lost control of a drone, which, as David Axe notes would imply that it’s not an RQ-170, since it is designed to operate autonomously.

Of course, the question I’ve always had is why use an expensive stealthy drone in a theater where the opposition does not even have a radar.

If the Iranians have in fact brought down an RQ-170, and right now I would say it’s less than 30%, it happened because some moron in the Pentagon decided to deploy a system not required by the circumstances.

Mission Accomplished

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While on some objective level, there might be some advantages (For officers who need a combat tour on their resume) to a continued US presence in Iraq, the Iraqis loath the Americans, both the military, and (in particular) the mercenaries private military contractors.

So it comes as no surprise that the Iraqis have refused to extend immunity to the military and has additionally refused to allow US bases to remain in country:

The US suffered a major diplomatic and military rebuff on Friday when Iraq finally rejected its pleas to maintain bases in the country beyond this year.

Barack Obama announced at a White House press conference that all American troops will leave Iraq by the end of December, a decision forced by the final collapse of lengthy talks between the US and the Iraqi government on the issue.

The Iraqi decision is a boost to Iran, which has close ties with many members of the Iraqi government and which had been battling against the establishment of permanent American bases.

Obama attempted to make the most of it by presenting the withdrawal as the fulfilment of one of his election promises.

“Today I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” he told reporters.

But he had already announced this earlier this year, and the real significance today was in the failure of Obama, in spite of the cost to the US in dollars and deaths, to persuade the Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki to allow one or more American bases to be kept in the country.

Obama was doing his damnedest to try to make his promise to leave Iraq a promise in name only, but the Iraqis are having none of it.

Like I said, to the degree to which Obama claims to oppose “stupid wars”, he refuses to believe that any war can be stupid.

Just as as a note, Bush’s invasion of Iraq is the just the gift that keeps on giving.

Bug Hunt Accomplished…

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So Qaddafi is dead:

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman who fled into hiding after an armed uprising toppled his regime two months ago, met a violent and vengeful death Thursday in the hands of rebel fighters who stormed his final stronghold in his Mediterranean hometown Surt. At least one of his sons was also killed.

Al Jazeera television showed footage of Colonel Qaddafi, alive but bloody, as he was dragged around by armed men in Surt. The television also broadcast a separate clip of his half-naked torso, with eyes staring vacantly and an apparent gunshot wound to the head, as jubilant fighters fired automatic weapons in the air. A third video, posted on Youtube, showed excited fighters hovering around his lifeless-looking body, posing for photographs and yanking his limp head up and down by the hair.

Conflicting accounts quickly emerged about whether Colonel Qaddafi was executed by his captors, died from gunshot wounds sustained in a firefight, was mortally wounded in a NATO air strike on his escaping convoy or bled to death in an ambulance. But the images broadcast by Al Jazeera punctuated an emphatic and gruesome ending to his four decades as a ruthless and bombastic autocrat who had basked in his reputation as the self-styled king of kings of Africa.

So all that remains for NATO’s little colonial enterprise is the looting by multinational oil companies and ………… What else is there in Libya?

Tourism maybe? 

And, of course, money to gotten by looting privatizing state industry, the healthcare system, and education.

On Gilad Shalit

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From a purely tactical perspective, the idea that a thousand-to-one prisoner swap makes sense before final status negotiations is stupid.

I’m don’t begrudge the actions of his family, and their obvious happiness over the release of Gilad Shalit after 5 years, but I think that this will, in the long run, make things worse, not better.

It strengthens the role of hostage taking, as Hamas has explicitly stated.

I’m not a fan of Benyamin Netanyahu, and perhaps this colors my assessment of these developments, but I see this as a political hail Mary pass* by the Israeli PM.

Recently, Netanyahu’s political popularity has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for some time, witness the tent demonstrations in Israel, and my expectation is that he will call for new elections while whatever popularity boost he had gotten remains.

*Pun not intended.

Oh For F%$#’s Sake!!!!

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Obama is sending troops to Uganda:

President Obama is sending about 100 special forces troops to central Africa to help target the leadership of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious militia that has been raping and pillaging in the remote jungles of northern Uganda and neighboring countries for more than two decades.

The first team of armed advisors arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. Over the next month, the remaining U.S. troops, most of them Army Green Berets, will be sent to Uganda and surrounding countries, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Congo.

In a letter notifying Congress on Friday, Obama said the goal of the U.S. mission was to assist regional African forces in removing “from the battlefield” the militia’s leader, self-declared prophet Joseph Kony. But the U.S. troops will not fight unless fired upon, the letter said.

A militia known for forcing abducted children to fight and for mutilating its victims, the Lord’s Resistance Army has long been condemned by the U.S. and human rights organizations for atrocities against civilians.

Not only are we going into a yet another counter-insurgency, but we are going on a Mohamed Farrah Aidid style bug hunt.

When Obama said that he was opposed to “Stupid Wars” in 2003, what he neglected to say was that he doesn’t believe that any wars are “stupid”.

More Like George W. Bush Every Day

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Barack Obama is now claiming that the legal opinion granting him the authority to assassinate American citizens is a state secret, and so it is not subject to any sort of public scrutiny.

You know, as scary as George Bush was, he was basically a dunce, Barack Obama is a lot of things, but he is not stupid.

This not a fact that I find particularly reassuring:

Why? What justification can there be for President Obama and his lawyers to keep secret what they’re asserting is a matter of sound law? This isn’t a military secret. It isn’t an instance of protecting CIA field assets, or shielding a domestic vulnerability to terrorism from public view. This is an analysis of the power that the Constitution and Congress’ post September 11 authorization of military force gives the executive branch. This is a president exploiting official secrecy so that he can claim legal justification for his actions without having to expose his specific reasoning to scrutiny. As the Post put it, “The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.”

Obama hasn’t just set a new precedent about killing Americans without due process. He has done so in a way that deliberately shields from public view the precise nature of the important precedent he has set. It’s time for the president who promised to create “a White House that’s more transparent and accountable than anything we’ve seen before” to release the DOJ memo. As David Shipler writes, “The legal questions are far from clearcut, and the country needs to have this difficult discussion.” And then there’s the fact that “a good many Obama supporters thought that secret legal opinions by the Justice Department — rationalizing torture and domestic military arrests, for example — had gone out the door along with the Bush administration,” he adds. “But now comes a momentous change in policy with serious implications for the Constitution’s restraint on executive power, and Obama refuses to allow his lawyers’ arguments to be laid out on the table for the American public to examine.” What doesn’t he want to get out?

Think about it for a second: This ruling just an evaluations of public court rulings and public statutes, but they have buried this from any sort of public scrutiny.

There can’t be any sensitive secrets involved, but they are covering it up.

Something is hinky here.

What’s the Pashtun Word for Tet?

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Because the Taliban was all over Kabul today, and hit the US embassy:

Heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests struck Tuesday at two of the most prominent symbols of the American diplomatic and military presence in Kabul, the United States Embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters, demonstrating the Taliban’s ability to infiltrate even the most heavily fortified districts of the capital.

As the insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, Westerners sought shelter — one rocket penetrated the embassy compound — and Afghan government workers fled their offices, emptying the city center. NATO and Afghan troops responded with barrages of bullets. At least 6 people were killed and 19 wounded.

Early Wednesday morning, occasional explosions could still be heard, and the Kabul police said they were continuing to count the number of dead insurgents. The Interior Ministry said Tuesday that it appeared that at least seven had entered the city. At least five took positions in a 14-story building under construction with clear sight lines to the targets.

As the gunfire pounded, loudspeakers at nearby embassies kept repeating: “This is not a drill, this is not a drill. If you are in a secure location, do not move.”

Winning hearts and minds much?