Category: War

More Like George W. Bush Every Day

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Barack Obama ignored the formal opinions of senior professional legal staff in the Department of Justice on the Libya campaign:

President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.

If there is a defining legacy of the Obama administration, it may be in the formalization of the Nixonian principle that if the President does it, regardless of the settled law, it’s legal.

Perhaps it’s time to dispense with our unique form of government, and move to a parliamentary one, because if there are no constraints on the executive beyond elections, then the political system must be able to force elections at times like this.

Normally, I Find This to Be a Typically Meaningless Gesture…

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But Dennis Kucinich and the other house members who are suing Barack Obama for violating the War Powers Act in Libya are doing the right thing:

Ten House members led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) are filing a complaint in federal court against President Obama for taking military action in Libya without first seeking congressional approval.

Kucinich and Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Howard Coble (R-N.C.), John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), John Conyers (D-Mich.) Ron Paul (R-Texas), Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), Tim Johnson (R-Ill.) and Dan Burton (R-Ind.) filed the complaint Wednesday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated,” Kucinich said in a statement. “We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies.”

The House members argue that the Obama administration overstepped its constitutional authority by authorizing the use of U.S. military force abroad without first receiving approval from Congress. U.S. forces have been involved in the campaign against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi for 88 days.

Critics argue that Obama violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution by failing to seek congressional approval for the mission.

It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court might handle this.

I’ve always felt that the requirement for Senate to declare war implies that there should be a legislative requirement for the approval of war, but these days, no one seems to take this particularly seriously.

I would note that Libya appears to be a particularly cut and dried case though, there is no security threat to the US, and the primary reason that we are involved seems to be that the US Military didn’t want to be left out of the party started by French and British neo-Colonial political calculus.

Germany F%$#s Up Again

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While I believe that the dissolution of Yugoslavia was inevitable once Milosevic took control of the executive council, the German decision post unification to feel their diplomatic oats to recognize the independence of Slovenia set in motion a cascade of events that led to the orgy of violence and Genocide in the former Yugoslavia.

Well, the just did it again, by recognizing the rebels in Benghazi as the government of Libya :

Germany, which declined to participate in the NATO air campaign against Libya, on Monday recognized the opposition National Transitional Council as the legitimate representative of Libya, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said during a visit to the rebel capital of Benghazi.

The announcement by Mr. Westerwelle comes after weeks of hesitation by Germany over which rebel leaders or movements, if any, it would recognize as an alternative to the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

“The Transitional Council is the legitimate representation of the Libyan people,” Mr. Westerwelle said after arriving in Benghazi. “With this council, we want to support the building of a democratic and law-abiding Libya.”

Germany will open a small mission in Benghazi, joining the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, Britain, France, Spain, Malta and Qatar, which have established a presence there in the past several weeks. Washington, however, has not extended diplomatic recognition to the council.

This has fiasco written all over it.

It’s Official, Libya is a Bug Hunt

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So a NATO Spokesman has just admitted that NATO is attempting to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi:

A U.N. resolution justifies the targeting of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, a senior NATO military official with operational knowledge of the Libya mission told CNN Thursday.

Asked by CNN whether Gadhafi was being targeted, the NATO official declined to give a direct answer. The resolution applies to Gadhafi because, as head of the military, he is part of the control and command structure and therefore a legitimate target, the official said.

NATO has been ramping up pressure on the regime, employing helicopters last weekend for the first time against Gadhafi’s forces. Explosions are heard often in Tripoli, evidence of allied air strikes.

NATO began bombing Libya on March 31, under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians who have been targeted by Gadhafi’s military.

Unsurprising. Since Gadhafi’s forces are not folding up under the air assault, the French and the British are desperate to avoid defeat, or worse, the need to send in ground troops, either of which will sink both UK PM Cameron and French President Sarkosy.

This was intended to be a neat neo-colonial adventure with the attendant electoral boost,  killing a few “wogs” for a few votes, but now its looking like a complete clusterf%$#.

Nope, No Escalation Here

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It looks like the Frogs and the Limeys will be deploying attack helicopters to Libya:

Britain and France are to deploy attack helicopters against Libya in an attempt to break the military stalemate, particularly in the important coastal city of Misrata, security sources have told the Guardian.

In a significant escalation of the conflict, the Apaches – based on HMS Ocean – will join French helicopters in risky operations which reflect deepening frustration among British and French defence chiefs about their continuing inability to protect civilians in Libya.

If I were a cynic, I would think that the goal is to get one of these choppers shot down, so that they have an excuse for an invasion when the captured crew are treated as unlawful enemy combatants.

If Your Allies are People Who Are Bigots

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And  you engage in neocolonialism masquerading as protecting dark people, in this case, the citizens of Libya, your allies will not support you, because bigots are stupid, so unless you say, “We are bombing Libya to give their oil to our energy conglomerates,” explicitly, they will not support you.

Case in point, Silvio Berlusconi and his racist buddies in the Northern League:

Italy’s belated decision to join the military campaign against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has brought fresh political woes for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with opposition to the bombing threatening to sink his fragile coalition.

Senior figures in the Northern League want an end to Italian air strikes only a week after they began following a personal plea by US President Barack Obama to Mr Berlusconi. Parliament will vote on the Northern League motion to this effect later today.

The xenophobic coalition partner says the bombing will provoke a wave of illegal immigration from Libya to Italy’s southern coast, and is demanding Mr Berlusconi set a date to end the raids. Umberto Bossi, the pugnacious Northern League leader, had threatened to bring down the government if parliament was not allowed to vote on the issue. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, another Northern League figure, predicted the government would fall if the bombing was not stopped.

Considering his road to power, I find that is one of the most schadenfreude rich stories I’ve heard in a while.

The phrase, “Hoist with his own petard,” comes to mind.

Your bin Laden Update

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The most interesting bit is the dog that did not bark, one of the red flags that tipped off the CIA was the fact that a rather expensive, on the order of $1 million, but there were no phone lines or internet connectivity.

After the Moonie Washington Times revealed that we were monitoring his satellite phone in the 1990s, we went old school on his communications, using only couriers, and so, when he set up his homestead a mile from the Pakistani military academy (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?) he was having none of telecommunications thing, and that lack marked him.

On the truly weird side, it turns out that the raid was life tweeted by someone (@ReallyVirtual) who was unaware of the raid, and was just complaining about the helicopters late at night.

There is a bigger picture, but that’s the next post.

And the Escalation into an Attempt at Regime Change Continues

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Both the French and the British intend to send troops in to, “Protect aid deliveries,” despite the fact that Valerie Amos, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, has said that this is not necessary, and may risk conflating the aid program with military action.

The problem here is that there have been explicit calls for regime change since the UN resolution had passed, and because the Qaddafi regime has refused to collapse like a bunch of wet broccoli, the French and the British have felt the need to escalate in order to save face.

Not like Vietnam at all.

Sarkosy is trying to save his ass in the next elections, and Cameron is trying to distract the British public from the failure of his full throated embrace of Hoovernomics, and they thought that a “Private Little War” would be good for politics, and it allowed them to get their colonialist rocks off as a bonus.

Unfortunately, wars are never a certainty.

Signs of the Apocalypse

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When Peggy “Dolphins Saved Elian Gonzalez” Noonan says that she thinks that an American war is stupid:

The biggest takeaway, the biggest foreign-policy fact, of the past decade is this: America has to be very careful where it goes in the world, because the minute it’s there — the minute there are boots on the ground, the minute we leave a footprint — there will spring up, immediately, 15 reasons America cannot leave. The next day there will be 30 reasons, and the day after that 45. They are often serious and legitimate reasons.

So we wind up in long, drawn-out struggles when we didn’t mean to, when it wasn’t the plan, or the hope, or the expectation.

We have to keep this phenomenon in mind as we chart our path in the future. It’s easy to start a war but hard to end one. It’s as simple as that. It’s easy to get in but hard to get out. Even today, in Baghdad, you hear that America can’t leave Iraq because the government isn’t sturdy enough, the army and police aren’t strong enough to withstand the winds that will follow America’s full departure, that all that has been achieved — a fragile, incomplete, relative peace — will be lost. America cannot leave because Iraq will be vulnerable to civil war, not between Sunnis and Shiites, they tell you now, but between Arabs and Kurds, in the north, near the oil fields.

She is, of course, writing about the war du jour, Libya, and she is correct.  It’s a bad idea.

What’s more, when this operation is well within the capabilities of other countries, either the UK or France could likely do this on their own, and certainly can do this together, so say nothing of the contributions of Italy and Canada (!?!?!?!), there is no need for any contribution to the kinetic portion of the war by the US, though satellite and signals intelligence could certainly make a difference.

A reader of Americablog nailed what is driving the American involvement in this:

The main reason the US seems to want to be involved seems to be to avoid being left out. If the UK and France could take out Libya on their own, people might start asking if the US really needs to have a military an order of magnitude larger than the UK and French forces combined.

Our bloated giant Pentagon cannot allow our allies to engage in a kinetic war (i.e. shooting) without a major involvement, because if they do, it casts doubt on the raison d’être for us to spend more on our defense than the rest of the world combined.

So, not only does the fact that we are a military behemoth make us stay in places that we have never gone, it makes us go places we should never go, because to stay home when others go would put its continued support at risk.

So, We are Bombing Libya

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On our part, just cruise missiles launched at air defense installations, with the British and the French taking the lead, apparently hitting tanks, and perhaps artillery installations, with aid from the Italians and the Canadians. (The Canadians?!?!?! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?)

On interesting thing is that the French may have initiated attacks before the rest of the allies had reached an agreement on plans:

The campaign began with French warplanes, which started their attacks even before the end of an emergency meeting among allied leaders in Paris. The officials, reacting to news that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were attacking the rebel capital, Benghazi, despite international demands for a cease-fire, said they had no choice but to defend Libyan civilians and opposition forces.

But there were signs of disagreement among the allies in Paris. Some diplomats said that French insistence on the meeting had delayed military action against Colonel Qaddafi’s forces before they reached Benghazi, a charge that French officials denied.

This behavior makes me wonder if perhaps the French eagerness for military action may be an attempt by the tremendously unpopular Nicolas Sarkosy to boost his reelections chances, as Margaret Thatcher did in the early 1980s with the Falklands.

This all is further complicated by the fact that Libya is claiming that it is adhering to the UN mandated ceasefire.

No clue as to where the truth on all this is.

So, There’s a No-Fly Zone in Libya

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The UN Security Council just passed it.

So it’s war, by any other name.

I think that this is a bad idea, and whatever emerges at the other end, and my money is still on Qaddafi, the opposition will now lack legitimacy, as will a successor government.

Kevin Drum has an interesting take on this, which is that administration ambivalence on this actually led to the widespread support necessary for the Security Council resolution.

I’m not sure, but I feel that this won’t end well.

When one backs a revolution, one expects some say over the outcome, and looking at the history of that, (*cough* reinstating the Pshaw of Iran, which lead to the current theocracy *cough*) it never ends well.

Little Davey, Don’t You Know That This Was a Political Ploy? Why Do You Hate America?

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Fresh on the heels of claiming that Afghan parents burn their own children for crall political purposes, little Davey Petraeus is apologizing for a helicopter strike that killed 9 children who were collecting wood:

A NATO airstrike that Afghan officials said Wednesday killed nine children collecting firewood in eastern Afghanistan the day before became the latest irritant in the tense relationship between President Hamid Karzai and the international force in the country.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top NATO commander here, issued an apology for an error that military officials attributed to faulty communication as an air weapons team responded to an attack on a NATO base Tuesday in Konar province.

“We are deeply sorry for this tragedy and apologize to the members of the Afghan government, the people of Afghanistan and most importantly, the surviving family members of those killed by our actions,” Petraeus said in an unusually contrite written statement. “These deaths should have never happened and I will personally apologize to President Karzai.”

The strike increased the already high tension between Karzai and NATO commanders, who came under scrutiny late last month because of another case in which Afghan officials alleged that dozens of civilians were killed in a U.S. military operation, also in Konar province.

Why does he hate America?

Doesn’t he know that whenever we blow up innocent civilians, it’s because they were trying to get killed, because it helps the Taliban?

“Unusually contrite” my ass.

I’m not sure why he isn’t following his usual pattern, lie, release phony facts, and a few weeks later issue a correction on the weekend, but somehow or other the truth got out despite his best efforts.

This is not typical behavior for him.

End the War, Bitch

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The official hed is that the Democratic National Committee has passed a resolution calling for an accelerate withdrawal from Afghanistan, but when you consider the fact that the sitting president, who has doubled down on escalation, and soft pedaled any exodus for both Iraq and Afghanistan, reclassifying soldiers there as “non-combat” and directing a torrent of private military contractors (mercenaries) into both nations, it is pretty clear that this was a deliberate challenge to Barack Obama.

Stay Classy David Petraeus

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In response to allegations of civilian casualties in response to military operations in Konar province, America’s favorite showboating general claimed that Afghan parents probably burnt their own children for propaganda purposes:

To the shock of President Hamid Karzai’s aides, Gen. David H. Petraeus suggested Sunday at the presidential palace that Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties, according to two participants at the meeting.

…………

The U.S. military “did have initial reports that the feet and hands of the children appeared to have been burned,” Smith said. “We have observed increased reporting of children being disciplined by having their hands and feet dipped into boiling water. No one is claiming this is the case in this instance, but it may well be.”

Petraeus apparently had suggested something along these lines at the national security council meeting Sunday, remarks that “really bothered everyone,” including Karzai, one participant said.

“He claimed that in the midst of the [operation] some pro-Taliban parents in contact with a government official decided to create a civilian casualty claim to pressure international forces to cease the [operation]. They burned hands and legs of some of their children and sent them to the hospital,” a second participant said.

I know that Petraeus sees his mission as continuing the various “Forever Wars,” because it keeps that old Pentagon gravy train rolling along, but this is beneath contempt.

Maybe, instead of coming up with alibis for civilian casualties, he should try to reduce the number.

How Obama Loses to Sarah Palin in 2012

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If there was a Republican who was unelectable in 1967, it was Richard “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” Nixon.

Following his surprise loss to Pat Brown in 1962, he signed off with a level of nastiness that seemed to be the final nail in his political career.

But 2 years later, he was president of the United States.

He was President because Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his Vice President, and designated heir, Hubert Humphrey, were unable to recognize reality with regard to the Vietnam war, at least publicly, because they felt the need to appear hawkish to take away the perennial Republican talking point that Democrats were “soft” on defense.

Well, we are seeing it yet again with Obama, who is poised to let Afghanistan define his presidency.

It’s actually worse than Vietnam, because Afghanistan has never been a viable nation state, but rather is a void on the map where neither the Russians nor the British were able to maintain power in their “Great Game” for that part of the world, and we are in there supporting one side.

Additionally, we have the fact that, as mind boggling as it sounds, the regime that we are supporting is even more corrupt and ineffective than any that we ever supported in South Vietnam, and that we also have religious overtones in this conflict that were largely lacking in the ‘Nam.

And now we have one of Obama’s biggest supporters in the Senate, John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is saying that we need to get out now:

One of the Obama administration’s key allies in Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), is breaking with the president on Afghanistan and saying the strategy in the war needs to be revised. The development, coming from someone who was once a strong backer of Obama’s decision to increase troops in Afghanistan, could deal a significant blow to support for the administration.

“What I don’t want is to be party to a policy that continues simply because it is there and in place,” said Kerry in an interview with the Boston Globe about his evolving views on the war. “That would be like Vietnam. And that is what I am determined to try to prevent.”

Kerry, according to the Globe, is calling for “a more limited focus and fewer American troops than the 155,000 that are in place now.” In the coming months, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be holding a series of oversight hearings on the Obama administration’s strategy.

Kerry is a creature of the Senate, and so is mild in his disapprobation of the current policy, particularly since he shares a political party with Obama, but this is very clear. He is saying that we need to get the hell out now.

He’s right too.  Afghanistan is not called the “Graveyard of Empires” for nothing.

I do not expect that Obama will take this advice to heart though:  He is too concerned with political calculation, where he thinks that being hawkish will take away a Republican talking point (sound familiar?), and is simply unwilling to override the desires of careerist generals in the Pentagon, for whom the war is a path to advancement.

Remember Always that the Cossacks Work for the Czar

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Go to the very gifted cartoonist’s website for a full size image, and buy some of his stuff

So when a political appointee of Barack Obama’s decides to use the King holiday to say that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have supported the never-ending war in Afghanistan, because it is somehow or other a “just war”:

Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department’s general counsel, posed that question at today’s Pentagon commemoration of King’s legacy.

In the final year of his life, King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson told a packed auditorium. However, he added, today’s wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner’s teachings.

“I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation’s military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack,” he said.

I understand that Mr. Johnson knew Dr. King, and went to school with his son, but seriously, using Dr. King to pimp the war in Afghanistan is so deeply appalling that it buggers the mind.

It is absolutely ludicrous when juxtaposed with the before and after pictures of Tarok Kolache.

Winning Hearts and Minds…

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This is your village

This is your village after the US military “saves it”

Any questions?

Because of activities by the Taliban in Tarok Kolache in Afghanistan, they basically occupied it, the US obliterated it with over 25 tons of munitions, but that’s OK, because it’s not like the Afghans are people deserving of consideration:

As [Petraeus Hagiographer and all-around toady Paula] Broadwell tells it, the villagers understood that the United States needed to destroy their homes — except when they don’t. One villager “in a fit of theatrics had accused Flynn of ruining his life after the demolition.”

An adviser to Hamid Karzai said that the 1-320th “caused unreasonable damage to homes and orchards and displaced a number of people.” Flynn has held “reconstruction shuras” with the villagers and begun compensating villagers for their property losses, but so far the reconstruction has barely begun, three months after the destruction.
“Sure they are pissed about the loss of their mud huts,” Broadwell wrote on Facebook, “but that is why the BUILD story is important here.”

Seriously, they live in mud huts, why should we care what the f%$# they think?

More seriously, this is the endgame of a failed colonial adventure, and I think that anyone with half a brain, including David “I want that 5th Star, Bitches” Petraeus, and Barack Obama, but the general is too interested in his career, and the President is too afraid of the Republicans calling him names, so the insanity continues.

Pass the Popcorn…

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Someone just hit 4chan hit by DDoS attack:

Controversial image board 4chan came under a denial of service attack on Tuesday.

A status message on 4chan’s status boards (below) reported that the birthplace of anonymous and home of midget porn had joined the “ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal” as victims of a denial of service attack.

Site is down due to DDoS. We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al.—an exclusive club!

The Anonymous contingent of 4chan was behind the attacks on Mastercard et al over the refusal of many elements of the banking industry to do business with Wikileaks. In response, patriot hacktivists have launched denial of service attacks on 4chan IRC channels.

This could get … interesting.

As to who I root for in this conflict, God bless them both, and keep them far away from me!