Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Occupy Together, a message from Yemen

Fellow Freedom Fighters,

As Dark forces try to push for WW3 and as we sit on the brink of the engineered clash of civilization, your movement is a bright light in the darkness. We in Yemen see hope of a better future as you join us in rejecting violence to seek a better world based on compassion and decency. We salute you!

I am writing you because we want to tell you about a young teenager named AbdRahman who ran away from home to see his father whom was reported killed by a drone, only to be blown away by another drone. This beautiful 16 year old will never smile again, nor will his cousin killed with him… The boys crime apparently was being Anwar Awlaki’s son…

And the same media that vilifies you and us, tells us how great this is and how cost effective this is. Is it really? Imagine if the money for this drone was used to build a school, imagine if the money was used to keep a family from being kicked out of their home, imagine if this money was used provide clean running water to a village?

How is the use of Drones acceptable? Scores of innocent men, women and children have been killed by Drones in Yemen. And in the US, what has become of your economy and quality of life? When will these drones be deployed to your cities?

We are planning a vigil in remembrance of these beautiful kids killed in the prime of their youth. Will you join us?

Can we share banners and march together and show we are one even though Oceans separate us?

If so, please lets coordinate. No message could be stronger to the agents of doom than this solidarity between the protestors in Yemen and the protestors in the US to say we are one and we will not be used as fodder for the 1%’s machinations against humanity.

With respect!

Tarek Alaini

Kitabhukm@ymail.com

http://www.facebook.com/Tarek.Yemen

http://yemendebate.wordpress.com

October 28, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Imperialism and Democracy: White House or Liberty Square?

By James Petras | October 23, 2011

Introduction:

The relation between imperialism and democracy has been debated and discussed over 2500 years, from fifth century Athens to Liberty Park in Manhattan. Contemporary critics of imperialism (and capitalism) claim to find a fundamental incompatibility, citing the growing police state measures accompanying colonial wars, from Clinton’s anti-terrorist laws, and Bush’s “Patriot Act” to Obama’s ordering the extrajudicial assassination of overseas US citizens.

In the past, however, many theorists of imperialism of varying political persuasion, ranging from Max Weber to Vladimir Lenin, argued that imperialism unified the country, reduced internal class polarization and created privileged workers who actively supported and voted for imperial parties. A historical, comparative survey of the conditions under which imperialism and democratic institutions converge or diverge can throw some light on the challenges and choices faced by the burgeoning democratic movements erupting across the globe.

The Nineteenth Century

During the 19th century, European and US imperial expansion covered the world. In tandem, democratic institutions took root, the franchise was extended to the working class, competitive parties emerged, social legislation was passed, and the working class increased its representation in the legislative chambers.

Was the simultaneous growth of democracy and imperialism a spurious correlation reflecting divergent and conflicting underlying forces, one favoring overseas conquest and another promoting democratic politics? In fact, there was a great deal of overlap between pro-imperialist and democratic politics and not simply among the elites.

Throughout the 19th and especially in the 20th century, important sectors of the labor and social democratic parties and numerous prominent leftists and revolutionary socialists, at one time or another combined support for workers’ demands and imperial expansion. None other than Karl Marx, in his early journalistic writings in the New York Herald Tribune critically supported the British conquest of India as a “modernizing force” breaking down feudal barriers, even as he supported (with criticism) the European revolutions of 1848.

The ruling classes, the driving force of imperialism, were divided: Some saw the democratic reforms, “citizenship”, as a means of raising mass conscription for imperial wars; others feared that the democratic reforms would enhance social demands and undercut the accumulation of capital and rule by the elite. Both were right: Along with greater popular participation came virulent modern nationalism, which fueled empire building. At the same time mass access to democratic rights led to heightened class organizations, which threatened or challenged class rule. Within the ruling classes, democratic institutions were seen as an arena to peacefully resolve conflicts between competing sectoral elites. But once they took a mass character they were perceived as political threats.

Imperial and class-based parties competed for voters among the newly enfranchised urban workers and rural poor. In many cases, imperial and class allegiances “co-existed” within the same individuals. The question of which of the two, imperialist or class consciousness would become ‘operative’ or ‘salient’ was in part contingent on the success or failures of the larger competing political projects.

In other words, when imperial expansion succeeded in easy conquests resulting in lucrative colonies (especially settler colonies) democratic workers embraced the empire. This was the case because empire enhanced trade, namely profitable exports and cheap imports, while protecting local markets and manufacturers. These in turn expanded employment and wages for substantial sectors of the working class. As a result, labor and social democratic parties and trade unions did not oppose imperialism, indeed many supported it.

In contrast, when imperialist wars led to prolonged bloody and costly conflicts, the working class shifted from initial chauvinist enthusiasm to disenchantment and opposition. Democratic demands to ‘end the war’ led to strikes challenging unequal sacrifice. Democratic and anti-imperialist sentiments tended to fuse.

The conflict between democracy and imperialism became even more apparent in the case of an imperial defeat and military occupation. Both the defeat of France in the German-French war of 1870-71 and the German defeat in the First World War led to massive democratic socialist uprisings (the Paris Commune of 1871 and the German revolution of 1918) attacking militarism, ruling class domination and the entire imperial capitalist institutional framework.

The Imperialism and Democracy Debate and ‘History from Below’

Historians, especially practitioners of the fashionable “history from below”, exaggerated the democratic values and struggles of the working class and understated the prolonged and deep felt support among important sectors for successful imperial expansion and conquest. The notion of ‘inherent’ or ‘instinctual’ class solidarity is belied by the active role of workers in imperial conquest as soldiers, overseas settlers, merchant mariners and overseers. Imperial collaborators and empire loyalists were numerous among English and French workers and, especially later, within the US labor movement.

The theoretical point is that the pre-eminence of democratic over imperial consciousness and action among workers is contingent on the practical material outcomes of imperial policies and democratic struggles.

Workers and Imperialism

Empire building makes demands on workers to produce more for less in order to export and invest profitably in colonized regions. This led to capital-labor conflict, especially in the initial phase of imperial expansion. As imperial rulers consolidated their control over the colonized countries they intensified exploitation of markets, labor and resources. Imperial exports destroyed local competitors. Profits rose, wages increased and workers turned from initial opposition toward imperialism to demanding a share of the increasing income of the export oriented manufacturers. Labor leaders and trade unionists approved of the policies of ‘imperial preference’, which protected local industries from competition and privileged monopoly control of colonial markets. They did so because imperial policies protected jobs and raised living standards.

Workers who were active in social struggles, blacklisted or jailed, voluntarily moved or were exiled to colonized countries. Once settled overseas, they were given privileged access to better paying jobs as overseers, skilled employees or promoted to managerial positions. Imperial based militant workers, once overseas, became colonial collaborators. Many encouraged former workmates, relatives and friends to join them as successful settlers or contract workers. The ‘domestication’ of workers and the reconciliation of democratic and imperialist sentiments was a cause and consequence of successful imperialism.

Empire Loyalism: Not by Bread Alone

While material benefits accruing to workers from “successful imperialism” are one factor enhancing workers’ imperial consciousness, this was reinforced by symbolic gratification, the sense of being a member of the “leading country in the world” where “the sun never sets on the empire”, was equally important. It is rare to find a country where the majority of workers express “solidarity” with the exploited miners, plantation workers or displaced peasants and indigenous small landholders in the ‘colonies’. The stronger the hold of the colonial power, the greater the ‘colonial opportunities’, the longer the colonial ties, the deeper the economic penetration, and the stronger the sense of imperial superiority among the imperial states’ workers. It is not surprising that the British workers, the unions and Labor Party raised few objections to the savagery of the imperial opium wars against China , the imperial induced genocidal famines in Ireland in the 19th century and India in the 20th century. Likewise, the French workers’ parties – Socialists especially – were in the forefront of the post WWII colonial wars against Indo-China and Algeria only turning against them in the face of imminent defeat and internal disintegration. In the same vein, US successful colonial wars against Cuba and the Philippines, its invasions of Caribbean and Central American countries were supported by the American Federation of Labor and many ‘ordinary workers’, even as a minority of radicalized workers opposed these wars. The ‘partial turn’ of labor against US colonial wars which occurred during the Korea , Vietnam and Afghanistan wars was a result of prolonged losses and high economic costs with no victory in sight. It should be added that US workers, in opposing the imperial wars, expressed no solidarity with the national liberation and workers movements of the colonized countries.

Imperialism and the “True Democrats”

To argue, as some on the Left have, that imperialism does not coexist with “true” democracy, is to argue that the last 150 years have been devoid of free elections, party competition and citizens rights, however abbreviated, especially over the past decade. The reality is that imperial intervention and expansion has drawn precisely from citizens’ sense of “obligation” to uphold the democratic institutions, which has enabled imperial leaders to elicit legitimacy and active citizen support or compliance in waging bloody, even genocidal, colonial wars.

If democracy has not usually been an obstacle to imperial expansion – indeed a facilitator under certain circumstances – under what conditions have workers and citizens movements turned against imperial wars? What has been the political response of the ruling class when the majority of electorate has turned against imperial wars? In other words: When the democratic institutions no longer function as vehicles for imperial policies, what gives?

From Imperial Democracy to Imperial Police State

The past ten years provide important lessons on the relation between imperialism and democracy in the United States .

Beginning with the controversial political circumstances surrounding known terrorists’ gaining access to the US and subsequently hijacking the airplanes on 9/11/2001, the US government launched two major colonial wars and numerous overt ‘clandestine’ ground and air attacks in Somalia , Yemen , Pakistan , Libya and other countries. The “global war on terror”, launched under the Bush regime, and implemented by non-elected senior militarist – Zionist officials in co-operation with NATO and Israel was supported by the democratically elected Congress. For that matter the vast majority of the electorate, influenced by an immense propaganda campaign of fear, media manipulation and lies endorsed the wars on terror.

Given the unprecedented scope and breadth of the wars, (a global war on terror), the vast increase in military spending and the huge outlays for an all encompassing internal repressive (security) apparatus (Homeland Security), a new executive-centered police state was constructed which superseded the existing democratic institution and rights of citizens.

The trajectory of imperial politics moved from early military successes to problematic prolonged occupation. This led to escalating resistance, growing state expenditures , a deepening fiscal crises , social decay and rising political opposition.

As in the past, contemporary imperial wars that are prolonged, costly and with no decisive victory in sight, have led to citizen disenchantment, followed by increased open rejection. The wage and salaried majorities who voted for imperial policymakers and backed their enabling legislation, including laws (Patriot Act) which suspended basic civil and constitutional rights, have turned away from the imperial agenda. Today the democratic majority prioritize their class, economic interests, especially in the face of a prolonged recession and unemployment and underemployment of close to 20%. Beginning in 2008-2011 endless wars and prolonged crises have set in motion a conflict between democracy and imperialism.

In other words, the democratic majority has become an obstacle to the implementation and pursuit of imperial wars. Imperial military activity in Iraq , Afghanistan , Libya , etc. did not lead to quick victories, the conquest of lucrative export markets and take-over of natural resource. Jobs were not created and no benefit accrued to employees and workers in the imperial country. High expenditures for arms undercut public investments in labor intensive employment in critically overdue infrastructures projects. The small number of dangerous jobs in occupied countries was unattractive and too risky for the unemployed.

In other words, unlike most previous imperial-colonial wars, none of the plundered wealth was used to secure workers loyalty to the empire. The burden of empire progressively undercut wage and salaried workers’ living standards. Over time, regressive taxation gradually eroded any sense of chauvinist grandeur or superiority. Instead citizens of the empire developed a political inferiority complex. Faced with determined Islamic opposition and China’s rising economic power, exaggerated bellicosity among a minority and critical introspection among the majority took hold. Popular consciousness of “something basically wrong” in Washington and Wall Street took over. The earlier war chants and mindless flag-waving, as the armies of Empire marched to Afghanistan and Iraq , were replaced by angry defeatism directed at misleaders. Over 80% of the public now articulates a negative view of Congress, rejecting both war parties. Similar negative views are held toward the White House, the Pentagon and Homeland Security.

After a decade of war and four years of economic crisis, mass protests erupted, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement puts new options on the table, displacing the imperial agenda with a powerful denunciation of the militarist-financial elite.

The executive rulers, especially the judicial, intelligence and police apparatuses increasingly implemented arbitrary police state measures. Tens of millions are subject to surveillance by Homeland Security. The police state intercepts billions of faxes, e-mails, web sites and taps telephone calls. The link between imperialism and democracy broke at the point where declining empire no longer could secure the electorate’s support or compliance.

More and more bizarre terrorist plots were fabricated by the intelligence agencies. The Iranian bomb plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington was the most primitive and crude effort to regain public support for imperial militarism in the Gulf region. Apart from the politically influential, but infinitely small, pro-Israel Zionist power configuration, US public opinion is not distracted from its domestic agenda; its quest for jobs at home and opposition to Wall Street.

As the conflict between imperialism and democracy intensifies, the previous ‘consensus’ fractures. The White House and Congress opt for imperialism backed by a profoundly anti-democratic police state. The majority of the electorate presses forward, utilizing their remaining democratic rights to change the political agenda from empire toward a social republic.

Conclusion

We have argued that empire and democracy have been complementary in times of ascendant imperialism. We have shown that when wars of conquest have been short and inexpensive, and when the results have been lucrative for capital and job-creation for labor the democratic majorities joined in support of imperial elites. Democratic institutions flourished when overseas empires provided markets, cheap resources and raised living standards. Workers voted for imperial parties, held positive opinions of executive and legislative officials, and applauded the colonial war veterans (our troops). Some even volunteered and joined the military. With vast citizen support for empire, the state more or less ‘abided’ by the constitutional guarantees. But the marriage of democracy and imperialism is not ‘structural’. It is contingent on a series of variable conditions, which can cause a profound rupture between the two, as we are witnessing today.

Prolonged, losing, costly imperial wars that increasingly erode living standards for over a generation have undermined the consensus between imperial rulers and democratic citizens. Early signs of this potential divergence were evident during the latter period of the Korean War, when public opinion turned against President Truman, architect of the Cold War and the US invasion of Korea . More evidence emerged during the Vietnam War. Faced with a prolonged, losing war, which imperiled the lives and opportunities of tens of millions of draft age Americans, millions in civilian life and the military opted to end the war and question imperial interventions. The repressive state was still not organized sufficiently to terrorize and contain the democratic upsurge of the 1970’s. The end of the Vietnam war represented the high point in democratic America’s quest to counter imperialism and rebuild the republic.

Subsequent small, quick, low cost and militarily successful imperial interventions in Panama, Grenada, Haiti and elsewhere did not provoke any conflict between imperialism and democracy. Nor did imperial clandestine and surrogate wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan and the Balkans elicit any significant democratic opposition since they were low cost (in lives and funding) and were not accompanied by any sharp cuts in social expenditures and incomes.

The onset of the current Afghanistan , Iraq , and global offensive wars were seen by some imperial strategists in the same light: Quick, low cost victories with few domestic costs. One highly placed pro-Israel official in the Pentagon even argued that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be “self-financing” via an oil grab.

The 21st century wars turned out otherwise: They followed the Korean-Vietnam pattern, not the Central American/Caribbean pattern. Immensely costly, the 21st century wars have not led to quick victories and, worse still, occurred in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, without the manufacturing and market boom of the 1950’s/1960’s which had cushioned the retreat from Korea and Vietnam.

The divergence between imperialism and democracy has become acute. Democratic dissent has increased and the police state has become more prominent and direct. Imperialism increasingly relies on “fabricated domestic and external terror plots” to augment the powers of the repressive machinery and rule by fiat. White House exhortations ring hollow. The public puts less and less credence in their rulers’ claims of ‘justifiable’ arbitrary detentions, massive surveillance and extrajudicial assassinations of US citizens (and even their children).

We now face long-term, large-scale dangers, inherent in imperial democracies. Not because of “internal contradictions” but because sooner or later imperial powers meet their match in the form of protracted struggles by anti-imperialist and national liberation movements. Only, when imperials wars take their toll on the wage and salaried majority, does the rupture between democracy and imperialism take place. Then and only then are democratic forces set in motion to create a democratic republic, with social justice and without empire.

The present danger is that imperial structures are deeply embedded in all the key political institutions and are backed by an unprecedented vast and sprawling police state apparatus, called Homeland Security. Perhaps it will take a major external political-military shock to ignite the kind of mass democratic uprising needed to transform an imperial police state into a democratic republic. A growing sense of isolation and impotence affects the ruling regime in the face of overseas military defeats and unyielding, deepening domestic economic crisis. The danger is that these fears and frustrations could induce the White House to attempt to regain popular support by attacking Iran under a manufactured pretext. A US/Israeli assault on Iran will result in a world-wide conflagration. Iran could and would retaliate. Saudi and Gulf oil wells would go up in flames. Vital shipping lanes would be blocked. Gas prices would skyrocket while Asian, EU and US economies crash. Iranian troops with their Iraqi allies would lay siege to the US garrisons in Baghdad. Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world will take up arms. US forces would surrender or retreat. The war would shatter the US Treasury. Deficits would spiral out of control. Unemployment would double. This likely sequence of events would trigger a massive democratic movement and a decisive struggle between an emerging republic struggling to give birth and a decaying empire threatening to drag the world into the inferno of its own demise.

October 23, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Our Tax Dollars At War, Obama The Most Pro-War President In History

By SoftboxFilms on Oct 4, 2011


Based on a “Flashpoints” interview with Dennis Bernstein & Dave Lindorff.

Bonus presentation:
Obama The Most Pro-War President In History

~

October 7, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

UK renews nuke claims, threatens Iran

Press TV – October 6, 2011

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox has accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons saying the military option cannot be ruled out to prevent Iran’s nuclear developments.

“[Iran] is developing a nuclear programme no reasonable person can believe is purely for civil use,” Fox insisted saying “we do not rule anything out” to “stop Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state.”

Fox’s threat comes as Iran has repeatedly said that it is pursuing a civilian nuclear program under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

It is also ironic that Fox accuses Iran of developing nukes, while Britain is preparing to upgrade its own Trident nuclear missiles under his own lead as Defense Minister and in clear violation of the NPT as a signatory to the treaty.

Secret Ministry of Defense (MoD) documents have revealed that the government has approved  £747 million in funding for Project Pegasus to build a new enriched uranium facility at its Atomic Weapons establishment (AWE), which is responsible for the design, manufacture and support of UK’s nuclear weapons.

This is while, the MoD earlier allocated another £500 million for Project Mensa at AWE Burghfield to improve its warhead assembly facilities.

The British government has spent £2.6 billion since 2008 to renovate the nuclear weapons production infrastructure at AWE in clear defiance of the NPT.

Britain and its western allies that accuse Iran of leading a military nuclear program have never presented proof for their claims while their own commitment to the nuclear non-proliferation has always been under question.

During his address at the Tory conference, Fox even went as far as imagining a nuclear-armed Iran saying it would trigger “a new arms race in the world’s most dangerous regions” by which he apparently meant the Middle East.

He did not, however, refer to the Israeli regime’s 200 nuclear warheads or the threat they pose to the region, as is the western practice.

October 6, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Obama again sends U.S. tax dollars to countries with child soldiers

By Stephen C. Webster | Raw Story | October 5, 2011

For the second year in a row, the Obama administration has waived financial penalties for countries that enslave children and turn them into soldiers, ensuring that tens of millions of U.S. tax dollars will continue to be used by those who support the brutish practice.
In a Tuesday meeting described by Foreign Policy magazine, White House officials explained that the waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008 were handed out again this year because many of the offending countries did not have enough time to comply with its requirements. Others, they said, were exempt from the law because they were incorporated just recently.

The law was intended to prevent any military aid from going to support the use of child soldiers, yet in South Sudan, over $100 million in military aid will go to support the new nation’s military, which has a long history of conscripting children. […]

Other countries exempted from the laws include Chad, which the administration said has taken dramatic steps toward eliminating the practice, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which was given a partial waiver that will still allow their soldiers to be trained by the U.S. military — despite the continued presence of child soldiers.

The Child Soldiers Protection Act was a former cause célèbre for Vice President Joe Biden, in his prior role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was part of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

The White House and State Department maintain that they are working with these nations to ensure the practice of enslaving children into the military will eventually cease. … Full article

October 5, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Assassination Rights

By Edward S. Herman | Dissident Voice | October 1st, 2011

Assassination is as American as apple pie. The record-breaking case of assassination targeting is Fidel Castro.  The 1976 Church Committee report on “Alleged Assassination Plots on Foreign Leaders” listed “at least” seven attempts to kill Castro, but the book by Fabian Escalante, the Cuban former official in charge of protecting Castro, claimed that the number of tries ran into the hundreds.  In 2006 Duncan Campbell pointed out that Luis Posada Carriles was still living in Florida after his failed effort to murder Castro (among his other terrorist actions), and Campbell noted sardonically that Florida is “a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their home.”1 It would be a mistake, however, to think that Florida is the terror center of the world—that honor falls to Washington, D.C. and its environs; Florida is just one branch of the center, just as Guantanamo is just one branch of a D.C.-centered torture network.

Aggression Rights

It is, of course, well established that the United States has aggression rights, and that international law applies only to others, although clients like Israel also have such exemptions by virtue of their clienthood, tail-wagging-dog capabilities, and power of their protector.2  U.S. aggression rights were made perfectly clear with the U.S. attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, which was as clear a violation of  the UN Charter as Saddam’s invasion-occupation of Kuwait in 1990. In the latter instance, the UN rushed to condemn Saddam on the very same day his tanks and troops rolled into Kuwait, and that great law-enforcer, the United States, rushed to oust him by massive force.

On the other hand, when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, this was merely a case of tolerable “birth-pangs of a new Middle East” (Condoleezza Rice), so that when the UN came into the picture it was more to protect poor little Israel from future pea-shoots from Lebanon than to protect Lebanon from current and future attack and invasion by a state that had already aggressed against it twice.  Even more interesting was the invasion of Rwanda by elements of the Uganda army in October 1990, just two months after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. Here, as in Lebanon, the invading forces were supported by the United States, so the UN imposed no impediment or penalty, and in various other ways aided the invading party and facilitated a genocidal process that followed later in the 1990s (and extended into the Democratic Republic of  the Congo).

Assassination Rights

Assassination rights follow in the same manner, flowing from military and economic power, arrogance, self-righteousness, and client status. As of this moment (early September, 2011), it is not clear whether Moammar Gadaffi is dead or alive—or, if alive, will long survive—but it has been openly acknowledged that the United States and its NATO allies have more than once bombed Gadaffi’s compound in Tripoli in an effort to kill him, the first incident occurring as early as March 20, the second day of the war.  This is by no means the first time that the enlightened West has tried to assassinate Gadaffi.  The British and French both tried, and the United States made an earlier effort in 1986 when it bombed Gadaffi’s residence in Tripoli, missing him but killing his baby daughter and many nearby civilians.

Assassination of civilians violates numerous international  prohibitions of such killing beyond military necessity; and it violates a stream of U.S. executive orders that declare, for example, that “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination” (F.O. 12333, 1981 [Reagan]). This is regularly ignored by U.S. leaders, hence by the media and by any potential-theoretical national or international law enforcement bodies.

The rationales for ignoring law and executive orders can be funny.  We can go after Gadaffi because he is “commander-in-chief” of the Libyan armed forces, hence a military target.  (Obama would, of course, be a legitimate military target for the Taliban, or Libyan armed forces, as I’m sure the editors of the New York Times would agree.)  One exposition of assassination law notes that “it seems fairly obvious that eliminating Gadaffi will go far toward bringing attacks on civilians to an end.”3  This might be especially true if his elimination would have ended NATO attacks on Libyan civilians, which, along with those of the NATO-supported insurgents, seem to have far exceeded those of Gadaffi and his forces.

Bringing a war to a quicker end has long been a rationalization for attacking civilians. During the bombing war against Yugoslavia in 1999 the stepped up attacks on Serbian civilian structures and civilian occupants was explicitly designed to force a quicker surrender; and the bombing of the Belgrade state broadcasting station (16 killed) was explained on the ground that the station served up state propaganda and was therefore a quasi-military target whose destruction would hasten an end to the war.  Then, of course, U.S. wars are always a matter of self-defense, against the threat of weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds rising over New York harbor, or some other threat to the pitiful giant. So assassination prohibitions never come into play—for us.

Israel‘s Assassination Rights

Or for our pitiful little client in the Middle East, which is a kind of pioneer in “targeted assassinations” and “preventive strikes.”  Israel has been killing Palestinians in extra-judicial actions for many years, both in the occupied territories and in Israel itself. The Palestine Centre for Human Rights estimates 604 targeted killings of Palestinians between September 2000 and March 2011, plus another 256 “collateral damage” bystanders killed. B’Tselem estimates 228 executions carried out by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) between September 2000 and October 2006, plus 154 non-targeted civilians. This, of course, just scratches the surface of the forms of violence carried out by the Israeli state and its settlers against the untermenschen who stand in the way. The IDF uses only rubber bullets in Israeli protests, but live ammunition in dealing with the Palestinians. The assassination programs are built on the foundation that Israel is confronted with “terrorists,” who can be dealt with summarily. That the dispossessing IDF is the operative body of a system of wholesale terrorism that daily violates international law is unrecognized not only in Israel but throughout the Free World.  Similarly, the Israeli wars of aggression in Lebanon and the genocidal war on Gaza in 2009 do not elicit sanctions or war crimes tribunals or discredit the Israeli state or leadership. Its right to aggress and assassinate remains intact.

In 2006 the Israeli assassination program received the imprimatur of the Israeli Supreme Court, which found that the assassinations of “terrorists” who had not been tried in any court of law were legal.  “We cannot determine in advance that all targeted killings are contrary to international law,” the court ruled.  “At the same time, it is not possible that all such liquidations are in line with international law.”  But the court did make it illegal to carry out an assassination attack where more than one sure victim was unidentified and was possibly an innocent. ((“Israeli court backs targeted killings,” BBC News, December 14, 2006))   Of course, the non-innocence of the properly liquidated targets had not been determined in a court of law, but this extra-judicial decision-making, which flies in the face of  international law, was acceptable to the court. The court also required that if feasible the terrorists should be arrested rather than simply assassinated.  Of course, if the target resisted their arrest killing them would be acceptable, and assassinating them where an arrest was not practicable was also acceptable.

This was a de facto “license to kill,” that would only put the killing establishment to some minor pains to keep the record clean and lawful.  “Targeted Assassinations—a License to kill” was, in fact, the title of an article published in Haaretz on November 27, 2008 by Uri Blau, using some IDF internal documents that described well how the Israeli Supreme Court’s assassination-approving decision would only slightly inconvenience the IDF’s assassination program. Blau shows that the Israeli military regularly carried out assassination operations, planned in advance as targeted killings, under the guise of planned arrests.  Blau cites evidence that top Israeli officers approved in advance the killing of Palestinians defined as “wanted.” This has been a scandal in Israel, with the alleged leaker of documents (Anat Kam, a then 23-your-old former IDF soldier) under arrest and Blau a refugee in England fearful of returning to Israel.  Needless to say Blau’s “License to kill” and  its findings have not been widely disseminated in the Free Press, nor has the freedom of speech scandal gotten much attention.

The United States: From Assassination Rights to Global Free-Fire-Zone Rights

Of course, with its vastly greater capacity to kill on a global scale, the U.S. “license” far surpasses client Israel’s. And, despite its serious domestic problems and resource scarcity for its civil society needs, the U.S. permanent war establishment is upping-the-ante in pursuing its villain choices across the globe.  The Nation‘s Jeremy Scahill testified before the House Judiciary Committee in December 2010 that the U.S. Special Operations Forces and Central Intelligence Agency have steadily expanded their ongoing “shadow wars” around the world, conducting missions in 60 countries during the Bush administration, and as many as 75 under Obama’s.  As Scahill added, the Obama “administration has taken the Bush era doctrine that the ‘world is a battlefield’ and run with it.”

Based on press reports dating back to June 17, 2004, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (U.K.) estimated that by the end of August 2011, between 2,309 and 2,880 persons had been killed in the U.S. “Covert Drone War” in Pakistan, with air strikes by these remote-controlled aerial killers under Obama outnumbering Bush’s 243 to 52.   These researchers found the reported civilian death-toll to be between 392 and 783—though the actual civilian toll is likely far greater, as the press reports which form the basis of this research tend to repeat the U.S. and Pakistani government line that every strike kills “militants,” and only in exceptional cases are civilian fatalities acknowledged in the reports.4

A photographic exhibit in London last summer by the Pakistani Noor Behram, titled Gaming in Waziristan, detailed the wreckage caused by the U.S. drone war.  Behram’s theme, in his own words, is “that far more civilians are being injured and killed than the Americans and Pakistanis admit.”  As he told the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont: “For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant.  I don’t go to count how many Taliban are killed. I go to count how many children, women, innocent people, are killed.” ((“US drone strikes in Pakistan claiming many civilian victims, says campaigner,” July 17, 2011))

A lawsuit filed in Islamabad against the retired C.I.A. lawyer John A Rizzo on behalf of two surviving family members of drone attacks accuses him of having played a role in determining targets for the attacks, and thus deciding who should die.  This and similar evidence in other U.S. free-fire zones such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere (Libya, for example, until the overthrow of the Gadaffi government in late August), stands in dramatic contrast with the reassuring words of White House’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan, who said in answer to a question on June 29 that the “types of operations that the U.S. has been involved in in the counterterrorism realm—nearly for the past year, there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.”  During the same speech, Brennan previewed the United States’ strategy in its Global War On Terror for the years ahead.  Unsurprisingly, remote-controlled drones and U.S. Special Forces Operations moving in-and-out of different countries against which no official U.S. declaration of war has ever been made were featured prominently.5

Brennan was, of course, lying about the sure-sightedness of this method of kill, and six weeks later, the New York Times helped him get-off-the-hook when he “adjusted the wording of his earlier comment on civilian casualties,” no longer saying that “there hasn’t been a single collateral death” in the past year, but that “American officials could not confirm any such deaths.”  In an amazing gloss on the argument over drones, Georgetown University Pakistan expert C. Christine Fair also told the Times: “This is the least indiscriminate, least inhumane tool we have.”6

Given the monumental scale of the violence and of the death and the destruction caused by U.S. military attacks against multiple countries around the world (formally or informally, in uniform or by hired-hands), the reported deaths in Pakistan to date are indeed relatively small, when compared to the deaths of 1 to 2 million Iraqis caused by the United States and its allies from August 1990 to the present.  But perhaps the most important point to note is the institutionalization, growth, and normalization of the work of the U.S. military machine. The CIA has grown in size and especially in its killing activities, featuring its drone war management, which Gareth Porter contends is unstoppable because of bureaucratic imperatives and power.7   It is, in the words of one CIA official, “one hell of a killing machine,” but it is probably exceeded in its death-dealing by the semi-secret Joint Special Operations Command, which “has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.” (Dana Priest and William Arkin, “’Top Secret America’: A look at the military’s Joint Special Operations Command,” Washington Post, September 2, 2011))

These, along with the Pentagon, have made the entire globe a free-fire zone in which people are assassinated without trial at U.S. discretion. NATO has been integrated into this process, expanded greatly since the break-up of the Soviet Union, whose alleged threat was the rationale for building NATO, and with NATO now stressing “out of area” operations that gear well with the U.S. “projection of power.” It was noted recently in a reflection on 9/11 that America’s wars have greatly increased rather than decreased since the demise of the Soviet Union and the ending of that supposed threat to international peace and security.8   But that seeming paradox rested on the belief that it was the Soviets who needed to be contained, rather than the United States and its allies. The latter still do.  And as during the Vietnam war where U.S. policy—free-fire zones, chemical warfare, massive killings of civilians in napalm and bombing raids—created a steady stream of recruits to keep fighting the aggressor, so today the U.S. (and Israeli) killing machine continues to produce recruits and resistance to its “out of area” advances. As this is a permanent self-fulfilling enemy- and war-generating process, it is ominous and may be an Armageddon March.

  1. “638 tries to kill Castro,” Guardian, August 3, 2006
  2. Herman, “Aggression Rights,” Z Magazine, February, 2004
  3. “Assassination under International & Domestic Law,” on the IntLawGrrls website, May 2, 2011
  4. Chris Woods, “Drone War Exposed,” and David Pegg, “Drone Statistics Visualized,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, August 10, 2011
  5. “U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy; Ensuring Al-Qaida’s Demise,” Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C., June 29, 2011
  6. Scott Shane, “C.I.A. Is Disputed On Civilian Toll In Drone Strikes,” August 12, 2011
  7. “CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs,”, IPS News, September 5, 2011
  8. Greg Jaffe, “On a war footing, set in concrete,” Washington Post, September 5, 2011

October 1, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Agent Orange on Okinawa

By JON MITCHELL | CounterPunch | September 30, 2011

“Without Okinawa, we cannot carry on the Vietnam war.” – Admiral Ulysses Sharp, Commander of U.S. Pacific Forces, December 1965

During the 1960s and ‘70s, the United States military transformed Okinawa into a forward operating base for its war in Vietnam. From mainland American ports, it transported supplies to the island it dubbed its “Keystone of the Pacific” before transferring them into smaller ships for the passage to South East Asia. But there is one vital ingredient of its war machine that the Pentagon denies ever passed through Okinawa – the defoliant, Agent Orange.

Given the fact that the military transported everything else through the island – from tanks and toilet paper to guard dogs and hundreds of thousands of GI’s – such a claim is implausible. Yet as recently as 2004, the US government has asserted that its records “contain no information linking use or storage of Agent Orange or other herbicides in Okinawa.”

Over the past few years, though, the cracks in that denial have started to show. In 2007, it came to light that the Department of Veterans Affairs – the US government body responsible for caring for sick soldiers – awarded compensation to a marine who had developed prostate cancer as a result of his exposure to Agent Orange in the northern jungles of the island. Then in 2009, the same department admitted that “herbicide agents were stored and later disposed in Okinawa” during Operation Red Hat – the 1971 US military project to remove its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons from Okinawa to Johnston Island.

Bolstering these official comments are the firsthand accounts of over twenty US veterans who have come forward to describe their experiences with Agent Orange on Okinawa. Longshoremen, forklift drivers, medics and marines, these former service members paint an alarming picture of the widespread use of the herbicide on ten American military installations stretching from the Yambaru jungles in the north to Naha Port in the south. Not only did these veterans help to unload and store the defoliant, they also sprayed it as a localized herbicide to keep down the vegetation around their bases’ runways and fences. “None of us gave Agent Orange the respect we should have,” says one supply yard worker who regularly used it without masks or gloves. “We didn’t know anything about its risks like we do today.”

Now, many of the US veterans who came into contact with Agent Orange on Okinawa are suffering from serious illnesses that the US government recognizes as the result of exposure to dioxins. In some cases, their sons and daughters were born with deformities consistent with Agent Orange poisoning. Despite this, none of these veterans exposed on Okinawa has been able to receive compensation – due solely to the fact that the Pentagon continues to deny that the defoliant was present on the island.

All of these veterans are painfully aware of the harm that Agent Orange may have caused Okinawan civilians at the time. Some of them express their concern at having bartered the defoliant with local farmers in exchange for food and beer, while others talk of seeing groups of school children walking close to base perimeters soon after spraying. “I wonder whether those kids are alive today,” one of the veterans told me. “Or whether the chemicals I was spraying damaged their health as much as it has mine.”

Agent Orange is far from a historical problem. Today in Vietnam, 50 years after the defoliant was first brought to the country, there are over twenty potential dioxin hotspots on the sites of former US bases where Agent Orange had been stored. Yet the people of Vietnam are better informed than those on Okinawa – the last American forces left Saigon in 1975 so Vietnam has been able to conduct extensive environmental testing on the land where the bases once stood. However, in modern day Okinawa, the US military continues to occupy approximately 20% of the island – and it has repeatedly refused requests to test the levels of pollution within its bases. Such a stance is particularly worrying given the military’s environmental track record on Okinawa which includes the irradiation of the entire Torishima Island through the use on depleted uranium ordnance in the 1990s and the discovery of lethal concentrations of arsenic and asbestos on land returned to civilian use in 2003.

Any discussion of American bases on Okinawa quickly becomes entangled with wider issues of imperialism, global security and legitimacy. But the question of whether Agent Orange was used on the island ought to transcend partisan maneuvering. The Pentagon’s increasingly unconvincing denials not only prevent veterans from receiving the medical care that they so desperately need, but they also endanger the health of both local Okinawans and American service members currently stationed on the island.

With the potential environmental and human impact so enormous, any delay by the US and Japanese governments to launch a comprehensive investigation into the issue is criminally negligent. It is time to reveal the full extent to which Okinawa has been suffering its own dioxin poisoning over the past 50 years.

~

JON MITCHELL lives in Japan. He can reahed at: jon.w.mitchell@gmail.com 

This essay first appeared in Japanese to coincide with the release of “Living The Silent Spring” – a new documentary detailing the damage military defoliants have caused to the children of both Vietnamese and American soldiers. A trailer for the film can be viewed here: http://cine.co.jp/chinmoku_haru/trailer.html

September 30, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | Leave a comment

The Myth of Bernie Sanders

Senator Bait-and-Switch

By THOMAS H. NAYLOR | CounterPunch | September 30, 2011

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has recently been elevated to near godlike status by the political Left in the United States.  Some of his fans have even suggested that he should challenge Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential Primary.  The more often he is accused of being a socialist by his political enemies on the Right, the more convinced the Left becomes that he surely walks on water.

Although Sanders may have once been a socialist back in the 80s when he was Mayor of Burlington, today, a socialist he is not.  Rather he behaves more like a technofascist disguised as a liberal, who backs all of President Obama’s nasty little wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.  Since he always “supports the troops,” Sanders never opposes any defense spending bill.  He stands behind all military contractors who bring much-needed jobs to Vermont.

Senator Sanders rarely misses a photo opportunity with Vermont National Guard troops when they are being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq.  He’s always at the Burlington International Airport when they return.  If Sanders truly supported the Vermont troops, he would vote to end all of the wars posthaste.

Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Congressman Peter Welch could hardly contain their enthusiasm over the news that Burlington International Airport had been named as a possible site to house the Air Force’s new F-35 fighter jet scheduled to replace the Vermont Air National Guard’s aging fleet of F-16s.  The new high-tech instruments of death will cost $115 million a pop in sharp contrast to the F-16s which cost a mere $20 million each.

From whom might these F-35s protect Vermont?  Possibly, Canada, separatist-minded Quebec, upstate New York, the New Hampshire Free State, or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?  Why on earth would anyone want to invade Vermont?  Vermont has no military bases, no large cities, no important government installations, and no strategic resources unless you count an aging nuclear power plant.  What if Canada, China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, or even the U.S. Marines were to invade the Green Mountain state?  Just what would they do with it?  Would all of the black-and-white Holsteins be confiscated, or perhaps the entire sugar maple crop be burned?  Imagine trying to enslave freedom-loving Vermonters.  Good luck!

Vermont is too small, too rural, and too independent to be invaded by anyone.  It is a threat to no one.  Furthermore, Vermonters, not unlike the Swiss, tend to stick to their own knitting rather than intruding into the affairs of their neighbors.  Vermont has always been that way and probably always will be.

Major General Michael Dubie, head of the Vermont National Guard, has expressed the hope that the Vermont Guard might be morphed into a center for unmanned drone aircraft.  Sanders, not unlike President Obama, thinks drones are cool.

Sanders is the darling of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the right-wing Likud government of Israel.  He has done everything within his power to keep the myth of Islamic terrorism alive.  He never questions the U.S. government’s unconditional support of Israeli acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.  It is as though these are nonevents.

Last, but by no means least, is the U.S. government-owned Sandia National Laboratories.  For over two years Sanders and former University of Vermont President Daniel Fogel have been encouraging Sandia to open a satellite laboratory in Vermont.  Sandia, whose historical origins can be traced back to the Manhattan Project in World War II, designs, builds, and tests weapons of mass destruction.  The Vermont laboratory envisaged by Sanders would not be involved with nuclear weapons but rather would be engaged in projects related to energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric grids.  Sandia, interestingly enough, is operated under contract by Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the world.  Lockheed Martin produces F-35s and drones.  General Dubie, who has close ties to Lockheed Martin, recently received an honorary doctorate from UVM.  No one at UVM seems to care whether or not the University gets in bed with a manufacturer of atomic bombs.

Bernie Sanders loves to rail against Corporate America, Wall Street, and the super-rich, but has nothing to show for it.  He’s done little to constrain their power and influence.  But everybody on the Left loves Bernie.

~

Thomas H. Naylor is Founder of the Second Vermont Republic and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University; co-author of Affluenza, Downsizing the U.S.A., and The Search for Meaning.

September 30, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Israeli Warplanes Fly Low over Turkish Exploration Ship

Al-Manar | September 30, 2011

Low-flying Israeli jet fighters “harassed” a Turkish seismic research ship exploring for natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean near Cyprus on Thursday night, according to Turkish media reports, in what seemed to be a further escalation in the already fraying ties between the once longtime allies.

Today’s Zaman, citing accounts in Turkish daily Vatan and Greek Cypriot daily Phileleftheros, reported that two F-15 jets took off from Tel Aviv and flew through the airspace of both Greek Cyprus and Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus. The jets reportedly ignored warnings from officials of Turkish Cyprus.

According to the report, Turkey sent two F-16 jets to track the Israeli F-15s, which subsequently returned to occupied Palestine.

Turkey said on Tuesday it was exploring for gas in an offshore zone where Cyprus started drilling last week.

September 30, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

We Agree

September – 2008

The Republican/Democrat duopoly has, for far too long, ignored the most important issues facing our nation. However, alternate candidates Chuck Baldwin, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader agree with Ron Paul on four key principles central to the health of our nation. These principles should be key in the considerations of every voter this November and in every election.

We Agree

Foreign Policy: The Iraq War must end as quickly as possible with removal of all our soldiers from the region. We must initiate the return of our soldiers from around the world, including Korea, Japan, Europe and the entire Middle East. We must cease the war propaganda, threats of a blockade and plans for attacks on Iran, nor should we re-ignite the cold war with Russia over Georgia. We must be willing to talk to all countries and offer friendship and trade and travel to all who are willing. We must take off the table the threat of a nuclear first strike against all nations.

Privacy: We must protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons under US jurisdiction. We must repeal or radically change the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the FISA legislation. We must reject the notion and practice of torture, eliminations of habeas corpus, secret tribunals, and secret prisons. We must deny immunity for corporations that spy willingly on the people for the benefit of the government. We must reject the unitary presidency, the illegal use of signing statements and excessive use of executive orders.

The National Debt: We believe that there should be no increase in the national debt. The burden of debt placed on the next generation is unjust and already threatening our economy and the value of our dollar. We must pay our bills as we go along and not unfairly place this burden on a future generation.

The Federal Reserve: We seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking, corporate, and other financial institutions. The arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests must be ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no corporate subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for their crimes and frauds.

September 29, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism | Leave a comment

Ralph Nader’s Grand Alliance

Progressives find hope—in Ron Paul

By Michael Tracey | The American Conservative | September 28, 2011

It’s no secret that Ralph Nader has held the Democratic Party establishment in low regard for decades now: the marginally more palatable alternative in an ugly duopoly, he claims, is still quite ugly. But lately Nader’s disdain has reached a new high. “It’s gotten so bad,” he tells me, “that you can actually say a Republican president—with a Democratic Senate—would produce less bad results than the present situation. That’s how bollixed stuff has gone.”

Not that he was  ever particularly optimistic about the Obama administration, especially its potential to make headway on curtailing corporate welfare, now Nader’s signature policy objective. But in that, as with so many aspects of Obama’s presidency, the adjectives “disappointing” or “inadequate” don’t even begin to capture the depths of progressive disillusionment. Looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, one might assume that Nader has little to be cheerful about.

Yet he says there is one candidate who sticks out—who even gives him hope: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

That might sound counterintuitive. Nader, of course, is known as a stalwart of the independent left, having first gained notoriety for his 1960s campaign to impose greater regulatory requirements on automakers—a policy act that would seem to contravene the libertarian understanding of justified governmental power. So I had to ask: how could he profess hope in Ron Paul, who almost certainly would have opposed the very regulations on which Nader built his career?

“Look at the latitude,” Nader says, referring to the potential for cooperation between libertarians and the left. “Military budget, foreign wars, empire, Patriot Act, corporate welfare—for starters. When you add those all up, that’s a foundational convergence. Progressives should do so good.”

I thought I’d bring up the subject of Ron Paul with Nader after seeing the two jointly interviewed on Fox Business Channel in January. Nader had caught me off guard when he identified an emergent left-libertarian alliance as “today’s most exciting new political dynamic.” It was easy to foresee objections that the left might raise: if progressives are in favor of expanding the welfare state, how well can they really get along with folks who go around quoting the likes of Hayek and Rothbard?

“That’s strategic sabotage,” Nader responds, sharply. “It’s an intellectual indulgence. … If they’re on your side, and you don’t compromise your positions, what do you care who they quote? Franklin Delano Roosevelt sided with Stalin against Hitler. Not to draw that analogy, I’m just saying—why did he side with Stalin? Because Stalin went along with everything FDR wanted.”

There may be an insurmountable impasse between the camps on social-safety-net spending. “But,” Nader says, “you could get together on corporate entitlements, subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts. Ron Paul is dead set against all that. So are a lot of libertarian-conservatives. In fact, it’s almost a mark of being a libertarian-conservative—in contrast to being a corporatist-conservative.”

“Do you read all these right-wing theoreticians?” he goes on. “Almost every one of them warned about excessive corporate concentration. Hayek did, [Frank] Meyer did, even Adam Smith did in his own way.” He leaves the mechanics of a left-libertarian political coalition to be sussed out later.

If the issues around which progressives and libertarians can coalesce, I ask Nader, are the most intractable, deeply entrenched problems, is he proposing that such a coalition would be more tenable than the one currently cobbling together the Democratic Party, with its many Blue Dogs and neoliberals?

“Exactly,” Nader says. “Libertarians like Ron Paul are on our side on civil liberties. They’re on our side against the military-industrial complex. They’re on our side against Wall Street. They’re on our side for investor rights. That’s a foundational convergence,” he exhorts. “It’s not just itty-bitty stuff.”

Nader cites opposition to “the self-defeating, boomeranging drug war” as another source of common ground, in the face of both parties’ indifference—with the scant exceptions of a few House Democrats who favor decriminalizing marijuana—to drug prohibition’s many ills. Ron Paul’s rejection of the very notion that personal drug use should be a criminal offense is something that has resonated with younger supporters, often catalyzing their first moment of political consciousness.

“This is one place where conservatives and liberals can get together,” Paul tells me. “Because it’s sort of a nullification approach—a states’ rights approach.” California attempted to legalize marijuana outright via ballot initiative “because they have millions and millions of people who are using it, yet the federal government’s position—Obama’s position—is still to go after people even if it’s being used for medicinal reasons, and putting sick people in jail.”

“But of course,” Paul goes on, “the conservatives are very weak on states’ rights when it comes to marijuana, which I find rather ironic. Why don’t they just stick to principle and say, ‘Well, we’re for states’ rights. Let the states do this.’ But no, they come down hard and say, ‘We need a federal law’.” He sounds exasperated. “I think both sides should work harder at being consistent.”

Some critics allege that Paul himself has proven inconsistent on states’ rights when it comes to the Defense of Marriage Act, which created federal criteria for the recognition of marital unions. Campaign literature distributed by the Paul campaign, under the header “Barack Obama’s Assault on Marriage,” asserts that the administration has shown “a profound lack of respect for the Constitution and the Rule of Law” by no longer defending one of DOMA’s provisions in federal court. “As President,” the literature reads, “Dr. Paul would enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, stopping Big Government in Washington, D.C. from forcing its definition of marriage on the states.”

The flyer’s aggressive tone suggests it may have been written with an eye towards appealing to Evangelical voters. In our interview, Paul offers a nuanced position. He wasn’t in Congress in 1996 when DOMA was approved, but says he “probably” would have voted for it. “Looking back,” Paul tells me, “I believed it protected the states over the federal government’s dictates.”

How sharp is the divide on social issues between progressives and Paul’s more conservative supporters? I ask for his opinion on the central role religion has seemingly taken in the Republican presidential contest, something that has distressed progressives and libertarians alike. Texas Governor Rick Perry preceded the announcement of his bid with a massive Evangelical prayer rally in Houston, just miles from Paul’s congressional district.

“It certainly is his judgment call,” Paul says of Perry’s decision to convene a stadium-sized worship event. “There’s nothing that says he should not do it. But whether it’s the wisest thing to do? For me, I would consider it unwise.”

Paul is typically demure about his own belief in Christianity—willing to speak about it when prompted, but never ostentatious. “It might be the way I was raised. We weren’t ever taught to carry religion on our sleeves.” He references New Testament admonitions against going “out on the sidewalk” to “make a grandstand.” “You’re supposed to go quietly into your closet to pray,” Paul says, “and not be demonstrating in any particular way. So I think I have followed that more than others.”

I ask him at what point journalists should be entitled to press candidates on their personal doctrinal views. Ordinarily, Paul says, it’s inappropriate. “But if you start using religion precisely to gain political advantage,” he adds, “then I think it’s much fairer to ask those questions.”

Nader takes a grim view of Perry, who polls indicate is the Republican frontrunner. “It’s easy to say he may self-destruct, but he’s starting to get some of that Reagan teflon. The Republican Party is going to self-destruct with Perry. I don’t think he’s like Reagan. He’s too cruel and vicious.”

There are nascent movements underway to bring disaffected progressives into Ron Paul’s fold. A new organization called Blue Republican, advertised on the Huffington Post and elsewhere, urges Democrats to pledge their support for Paul. While Nader isn’t willing to endorse Paul’s candidacy at this point, during our interview his praise grew increasingly effusive. “Ron Paul has always been anti-corporate, anti-Federal Reserve, anti-big banks, anti-bailouts,” Nader says. “I mean, they view him in the same way they view me on a lot of these issues. Did you see the latest poll? He’s like two points behind Obama.”

“That’s where the hope comes from,” Nader continues. “Because the left will reach out. I mean, they’re already reaching out. They want as many allies as possible. It’s the right-wing that is being split, and that’s historically been the case—the corporatists make sure authentic conservatives are vectored in other directions. They’re vectored on the social religious issues, abortion, more recently on raising the debt limit. ‘Keep going after the libs,’ the corporatists say. Because otherwise, authentic conservatives may develop a cooperative effort with the ‘libs’ on other issues, which are our issues,” he concludes. “The big issues.”

Michael Tracey is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in The Nation, Reason, Mother Jones, and other publications.

September 29, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

How McChrystal and Petraeus Built an Indiscriminate “Killing Machine”

Gareth Porter | Truthout | 26 September 2011

Even if the rest of the US military effort in Afghanistan has been largely written off by the news media as a failure, the campaign of targeted raids against insurgents by commandoes under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has gotten a reputation for devastating effectiveness. As an Associated Press story in early September 2010 put it, the “mystique of elite, highly trained commandos swooping down on an unsuspecting Taliban leader in the dead of night plays well back home….”

Central to this larger-than-life image of the Special Ops night raids in Afghanistan is the assumption that their targeting has been highly accurate.

John Nagl, who was on Gen. David Petraeus’s staff in Iraq and now runs the pro-military think tank Center for New American Security, suggested in a PBS “Frontline” documentary on the targeted raids last January that the US military had gotten “so good at using electronic means of identifying, tracking and finding” insurgents that it had created an “industrial strength counterterrorism killing machine.”

The accumulated evidence that has now seeped through the cloak of secrecy surrounding Special Operations Forces (SOF) “kill/capture raids” tells a very different story, however. Although the raids have undoubtedly killed a large number of Taliban commanders and fighters, it is now clear that they also killed and incarcerated thousands of innocent civilians. The failure to discriminate between combatants and civilians flows directly from a targeting methodology that is incapable of such discrimination.

Creating Intelligence Without Human Vetting

The system of targeted raids now practiced in Afghanistan was first introduced by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in Iraq. In his book “The War Within,” Bob Woodward described how the JSOC under McChrystal had adopted “some of the most highly classified techniques” in the US government system of classification in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 to target and kill al-Qaeda and Shi’a militia fighters. Woodward contributed to the myth of all-knowing JSOC commanders by suggested that those techniques may have been the biggest factor in reducing the violence in Iraq. It is well documented, however, that Sunni and Shi’a insurgencies ended or tapered off because of broader political factors, not because of JSOC’s killing operations.

In fact, McChrystal’s operation relied on far more mundane technologies than Woodward’s sensational language suggested. In a new book, “Task Force Black,” by Mark Urban, the diplomatic editor at BBC’s “Newsnight,” reveals that McChrystal’s command gathered intelligence on al-Qaeda and Mahdi Army personnel from three well-known technologies: 24-hour surveillance by drone aircraft, monitoring of mobile phone traffic and pinpointing the physical location of the phones from their signals.

The key to JSOC definition of a given insurgent “network” was the decision to maintain long-term aerial surveillance of a particular location. McChrystal’s intelligence chief Col. Michael Flynn liked to call surveillance by drone aircraft “The Unblinking Eye” – an image suggesting a godlike power of observation. The implication of the new intelligence methodology developed by McChrystal and Flynn was that anyone who visited a location under surveillance or who communicated with a mobile phone associated with that location could be considered to be part of the insurgent network.

To convert the raw data obtained from drone surveillance and tracking mobile phone calls into intelligence on who to target, Flynn turned to a tool called “social network analysis.” In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, that technique had became almost overnight the favored tool for analyzing terrorist and insurgent networks. It provided a framework for construction of models of networks by measuring the number of direct interactions between individuals or “nodes.” With a quantitative tool called “link analysis” and accompanying software, intelligence analysts could see the raw data from drone surveillance and links among telephones transformed into a “map” of the insurgent “network” in each locality.

Traditional intelligence analysis of an insurgent network would have involved verifying the identities of those individuals who had visited the location or communicated with others associated with the network to assess the nature of the relationship. From the beginning of the new McChrystal-Flynn system, however, the emphasis was on speed of collection rather than on such careful analysis of the data. Urban recalls that McChrystal and Flynn introduced the concept of “F3EA” – “find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze.” That meant that they aimed at obtaining new data from each raid that could be used to add to the target list for future raids – often within hours of the previous one.

Scaling Up Raids in Afghanistan

In 2009, the whole system began to shift from Iraq to Afghanistan. McChrystal was chosen as the new commander of all US and NATO forces in Afghanistan and took Flynn with him. As the US began its drawdown in Iraq, thousands of SOF under JSOC command and most of the drones used in Iraq followed. Meanwhile, the focus of targeting of night raids in Afghanistan shifted from “high value targets” – high-level and mid-level al-Qaeda and Taliban officials – to anyone who was contributing to the Taliban war effort, whether in a military or civilian capacity.

These geographical and targeting shifts resulted in an exponential increase in the level of targeted raids in Afghanistan. In May 2009, before McChrystal arrived, US SOF were carrying out 20 raids per month. But by November, McChrystal had stepped up the pace to 90 per month, and by the following spring, he had increased the number again to nearly 250 a month – a 12.5-fold increase in one year.

Finally, during the transition from McChrystal to Gen. David Petraeus in the summer of 2010, the number increased to nearly 600 raids a month. In just two years, the monthly total of night raids had been expanded by a factor of 30. But in April 2011, a US military source told researchers for the Open Society Foundations and The Liaison Center that as many as 40 raids were being carried out every night – a rate of more than 1,000 raids per month.

Scaling up the system of targeted raids by orders of magnitude would have had far-reaching implications for the accuracy of the targeting regardless of the location. But it was especially dangerous to transfer it to Afghanistan. Michael Semple, former deputy to the European Union (EU) Special Representative to Afghanistan, who has had contacts with many local Taliban commanders over the years, told me that most Afghans in the Pashtun south and east “have a few Taliban commander numbers saved to their mobile phone contacts” as a “survival mechanism.”

That fact means that US intelligence analysts working on targeting for the SOF raids must be able to “distinguish pragmatic, innocent contacts from active involvement with the Taliban,” Semple told me. Unfortunately, the methods used by US intelligence to compile the list of supposed network members is not aimed at making such distinctions at all.

Targeting Phone Numbers, Not People

In October 2009, when JSOC was carrying roughly 90 raids per month, the target list for SOF night raids, called the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL), included 2,058 names, according to one of the Afghan war logs documents released by WikiLeaks. A large proportion of the targets on the list were not identifiable individuals at all, but mobile phone numbers. “When you are relying on cell phones for intelligence, you don’t get the names of those targeted,” observes Matthew Hoh, who was briefed on the target list as the senior US civilian official in Zabel province before he quit in protest against US policy in September 2009.

The easiest way to scale up the JPEL to support 900 raids a month was to get more mobile phone call records linked to numbers already associated with insurgent networks. One obvious source is the population of roughly 3,300 suspected insurgents being held in the Afghan prison system, who are allowed to use mobile phones freely in their cells. Semple told this writer that access to cell phones by the Afghan prison population is the result of the connivance of the prison administration, in return for bribes from the prisoners. “I presume there are occasional searches to keep the price up,” Semple said.

But the population of the security wing at Pol-e-Charkhi, the main Afghan national prison, is probably the largest concentration of insurgent-related cell phone users in Afghanistan, according to Semple, and therefore intelligence agencies would naturally seek to exploit the phone contacts among prisoners and friends and families with varying degrees of ties to the insurgents.

Another knowledgeable source in Kabul confirmed to me that Afghan corrections officers in Pol-e-Charkhi as well as in five regional prisons carry out “shakedowns” in the cells of security prisoners every six months or so to confiscate “contraband” – meaning primarily their mobile phones. These “shakedowns” are done at the prompting of contract corrections advisers and trainers funded by the US government, the source told me, and the confiscated phones are turned over to US intelligence.

The phone numbers and call histories from those phones go into the database which is used to “map the networks.” But the link analysis methodology employed by intelligence analysis is incapable of qualitative distinctions among relationships depicted on their maps of links among “nodes.” It operates exclusively on quantitative data – in this case, the number of phone calls to or visits made to an existing JPEL target or to other numbers in touch with that target. The inevitable result is that more numbers of phones held by civilian noncombatants show up on the charts of insurgent networks. If the phone records show multiple links to numbers already on the “kill/capture” list, the individual is likely to be added to the list.

Kandahar and other provinces are rife with stories of people who were targeted by night raids because their cell phone number had been found in an insurgent’s cell phone. One Afghan told me about a friend whose brother had been seized and detained in a night raid and had been told by his interrogator that it was because of his cell phone calls to a known insurgent.

The US military’s obvious lack of concern about targeting noncombatants is due in large part to the assumption that civilians have knowledge of insurgents that can be usefully exploited if they are brought in for interrogation. That was the motive for US and Canadian troops to sweep large numbers of military age males in their large-scale operations in 2004 and 2005. “The detainees are detained for a reason,” said Canadian Brig. Gen. Jim Ferron, the intelligence chief for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command in Afghanistan in May 2007. “They have information we need.”

The intelligence value of detaining large numbers of civilians with presumed knowledge of insurgents is now a motive for the intelligence analysts compiling the “kill/capture list” to catch civilians in the net. A new report on night raids by the Open Societies Foundation and The Liaison Center quotes a military officer telling the author privately, “If you can’t get the guy you want, you get the guy who knows him.” And even when they are not the targets of the raid, civilians are deliberately swept up in order to interrogate them for several days before releasing them.

“A Very Precisely Targeted Operation”

Some raids, however, are deliberately aimed at killing the target, and cell phone data are also used to determine who is to be killed, as is dramatically illustrated by the killing of Zabet Amanullah by an SOF unit in Takhar province on September 2, 2010. The incident itself and the US military response to criticism of the killing as an obvious mistake highlights the reality that the intelligence analysts mapping the insurgent “network” routinely fail to make any effort to distinguish between an insurgent and someone who is in tangential contact with an insurgent.

Amanullah was a former Taliban commander who had quit the organization in 2001 and had become a human rights activist. He worked with former EU official Semple from 2003 to 2007, documenting pre-2001 human rights abuses and helping Semple make contacts for his work on political reconciliation in Afghanistan. Amanullah had originally fled to Pakistan, according to Semple, because one of the warlords who rose to power after 2001, Qazi Kabeer, had been a personal rival. But Semple said Amanullah had suffered such “an horrendous stint in ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] detention” in Pakistan that he returned to Afghanistan to live openly in Kabul with his wife and children, and was in contact with pro-regime political figures. He had been so “psychologically bruised” by the ISI experience that he was incapable of working covertly for the Taliban, according to Semple.

But former BBC correspondent Kate Clark, who also knew Amanullah personally, has documented in detail how US intelligence analysts had convinced themselves on the basis of their analysis of cell phone traffic that Amanullah and the actual shadow Taliban Gov. of Takhar, Muhammad Amin, were the one and the same man. They had concluded that the Taliban shadow province chief for Takhar, Muhammad Amin, must have taken the name “Zabet Amanullah” as his alias. The analysts had not even done the most elementary checking to see if there was an actual Zabet Amanullah.

What sealed Amanullah’s fate was that he was personally acquainted with Amin and had occasional phone contact with him. Semple, one of world’s most knowledgeable specialists on the Taliban movement, located Muhammad Amin in Pakistan and interviewed him six months after the Americans had supposedly killed him. Amin convinced Semple that he was indeed the former shadow governor of Takhar and even showed him his identification card. Amin confirmed to Simple that he had spoken with Amanullah roughly once a month by phone.

Amanullah had gone to Takhar to help his nephew’s parliamentary campaign. Nine other Afghans – all campaign workers for his nephew – were killed along with Amanullah in an SOF helicopter attack on two cars. He had cleared his visit to Takhar with the Shah Jehan, the police chief in Takhar, who was a personal acquaintance, according to Semple. A simple phone call to Jehan would have easily disabused the SOF of its assumption about Zabet Amanullah as the alias of the Taliban province chief.

The idea that the Taliban governor of Takhar would be riding along with the campaign staff of a candidate for the Afghan Parliament in broad daylight is so obviously implausible that it should have been a flashing red light for the operation. But Petraeus’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was immune to such logic. It issued a statement more than a week after the attack that suggested those riding along with the man who was killed must also have been insurgents. “The question remains,” the statement said, “why an election official or candidate was travelling with a known terrorist.”

Even after Afghan government officials had unanimously condemned the killing of Amanullah as a horrible mistake, Petraeus told PBS “Frontline” at the end of January that the killing was “a very precisely targeted operation” and that “there is no question about who this individual was.” Petraeus was so confident that they had gotten the right man that he agreed to Clark’s request to meet with officers of the SOF unit involved in the murder of Amanullah.

It was apparently the first time that SOF personnel had ever talked about a specific raid with anyone outside the chain of command. The officers who met with Clark over dinner did not admit to having made a mistake in the killing, despite her presentation of all the evidence to the contrary. But when she pressed them about the evidence of the life and death of the actual Zabet Amanullah, they admitted something far more damning: that they had not been tracking Amanullah by name, but had only a cell phone number.

Guilt by Association

As for the nine campaign workers killed, one of the officers told Clark, “If someone is a targeted individual or someone with that person, they are unlawful combatants.” And a second officer said, “If we decide he’s a bad person, the people with him are also bad.” Such statements are clearly at odds with the criteria used in humanitarian law to distinguish between combatants and civilians. And they shed light on the criteria used by the SOF commanders in tallying the number of “insurgents” they claim to have killed or captured.

In December 2010, ISAF gave pro-war blogger Bill Roggio impressive figures suggesting that the Taliban had lost 4,100 through capture and 2,000 were killed in the previous six months. Similar figures were released to selected journalists every three months after that. But an investigation of those figures reveals that all but a very small proportion of the total of insurgents detained in targeted raids were actually innocent civilians.

The publicly announced US detention policy as of 2010 was that all Afghans picked up in the field by US troops must either be sent to the Parwan detention facility or be released within two weeks. An unclassified February 5, 2011, internal document of the Combined Joint Inter-Agency Task Force responsible for detention policy in Afghanistan, which this writer obtained last spring, showed that only 690 Afghans were admitted to the US detention facility at Parwan during that six-month period – just 17 percent of the 4,100 captured insurgents claimed. The remaining 83 percent of those said to have been captured “Taliban” had actually been released within a few days because there was no evidence that they were indeed insurgents.

The proportion of civilians in the 4,100 captured “Taliban” was actually even higher than that. The same inter-agency detainee task force document shows that 20 percent of all those detained in Parwan during the six-month period were released upon further review of their files. So, the maximum number of detainees for whom there was any real evidence of active involvement with the insurgents was actually 552, or 14 percent of the total 4,100 captured “insurgents” claimed.

Many of the thousands detained in JSOC targeted raids were picked up because they happened to be present in a house that had been targeted. But many others, like Amanullah, were targeted because their mobile phone number had shown up too many times on a “map” of an insurgent network. Innocent civilians are much less likely to resist violently when their houses are raided by SOF, so the proportion of those killed in night raids who are civilians is bound to be much lower than the proportion of civilians among those who are detained, at least temporarily.

Hiding Civilian Deaths in Night Raids

But that does not mean that civilians represent a small proportion of the deaths in night raids. SOF units have routinely hidden such civilian deaths by reporting them as insurgents – even when it was perfectly obvious that they could not have been combatants. A raid on a compound in Gardez on February 12, 2010, killed two men, one of whom was a local government prosecutor and the other a senior intelligence official in the Afghan national police, and three women, two of whom were pregnant. But the SOF unit reported to the headquarters of the US-NATO command in Kabul that the two men were insurgents and claimed that the women had been found tied up and gagged. McChrystal defended the unit against the charges by eyewitnesses that its members had tried to cover up the killings of the three women even after the head of the Afghan Interior Ministry investigation of the incident publicly called the eyewitness testimony credible. Meanwhile, the target of the raid, who turned himself in for questioning a few days after the raid, was released without charge, according to the brother of the two men killed in the raid.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan issued a report last March offering the figure of 80 civilians killed in what it called “search and seizure operations” in 2010, but that was a figure that it knew was highly misleading. Nader Nadery, a commissioner of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, told my Afghan colleague Noori Shah Noori that that figure represented only the number of civilian deaths from13 incidents that had been fully investigated. It excluded the deaths from 60 other incidents in which complaints had been received, but had not yet been thoroughly investigated.

Nadery has since estimated that the total civilian deaths for all 73 night raids about which it had complaints was 420. But the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) admits that it does not have access to most of the districts dominated by the Taliban and that people in those districts are not aware of the possibility of complaining to the Commission about night raids. So, neither the AIHRC nor the United Nations ever learn about a significant proportion – and very likely the majority – of night raids that end in civilian deaths. The implication of that fact is that the majority of the more than 2,000 Afghans said to have been killed by SOF raids in 2010 may well have been innocent civilians rather than insurgents.

Two senior US commanders freely admitted to The Washington Post’s Dana Priest and William Arkin that they had not targeted the right home or individual on more than “about 50 percent” of the raids. Given the tendency of commanders to overrate the success of their operations, that admission further underlines the vast human cost of the uncontrolled violence carried out by SOF units in Afghanistan.

Inviting Revenge for the Killing Machine

Afghanistan is the last place on earth the US military should be allowed to practice such indiscriminate killing. Afghans of every political stripe and at every level of society, from the Taliban fighters to President Hamid Karzai himself, have been warning the United States that the killing of innocent civilians in night raids provokes nearly universal hatred of Americans. And Pashtun culture is based on the necessity to take revenge against those who have harmed one’s friends or family – even if takes the rest of one’s lifetime.

Yet, the Obama administration, in seeming indifference to this well-established reality, is set to sign an agreement with the Karzai administration that will keep thousands of SOF in Afghanistan at least until 2014. Even worse, the program of targeted raids practiced in Afghanistan is now being touted as the military tactic of choice for future US wars. It is now clear that this “industrial strength killing machine” needs be brought under control and held accountable for the grave damage it has done to Afghans and to the interests of the United States.

September 28, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »