Obama's Escalating Robot-War in Pakistan Endangers Us All : Johann Hari

Image via WikipediaObama's Escalating Robot-War in Pakistan Endangers Us All : Johann Hari

This is the best article I have yet read that intelligently critiques the "drone wars" in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Disturbing and compelling reading.

Lessons from Afghanistan

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Robert Blackwill, is a former U.S. Ambassador to India and was a member of the National Security Council during the Bush administration (with responsibility for Iraq). In a recent speech, Blackwill noted the following lessons that future policy makers should learn from America's Afghanistan experience:

• Keep U.S. policy objectives feasible. No dreams allowed.
• Take into account that local realities dominate global constructs.
• Stay out of long ground wars in general, and especially stay out of long ground wars in Asia.
• Reject the notion that America has the capability to socially engineer far-off societies fundamentally different from our own.
• Be cautious about making counterinsurgency the U.S. Army's core competence. Interacting with exotic foreign cultures on the ground, not to say dramatically changing them, is not exactly America's comparative advantage.
• Accept that diplomacy is almost always a better instrument of U.S. national purpose than the use of military force.
• Remember that often purported worst case consequences of U.S. external behavior don't ever happen, not least because we remain the most powerful and resilient country on earth.

Also from Stephen M Walt, who is the source of the above summary of Robert Blackwill's speech, is a great piece on 10 Reasons Wars Last Too Long. One of the many insightful quotes from the essay is:

Great powers often stay in losing wars not because the stakes in a particular conflict are so large, but because they fear that withdrawal will have profound effects on their reputation and far-reaching repercussions elsewhere. The scholarly literature on this issue suggests that these concerns are usually exaggerated, but that doesn't stop pundits from making this claim and doesn't stop politicians from listening to it.

A further lesson (my own I suppose) is to recognise that the perceived dangers of backing out of an un-winnable war (in terms of loss of national prestige) are far greater than those associated with staying in one.

Source of Blackwill quote is from Stephen M Walt.

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Corporations Profit From Permanent War: Memorial Day 2010

The following article by Bill Quigley is reproduced from today's Truthout under an Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Creative Commons Licence.

US law officially proclaims Memorial Day "as a day of prayer for permanent peace."

However, the US is much closer to permanent war than permanent peace. Corporations are profiting from wars and lobbying politicians for more. The US and the rest of the world cannot afford the rising personal and financial costs of permanent war.

Number One in War

No doubt, the USA is number one in war. This coming year, the US will spend 708 billion dollars on war, and another $125 billion for Veterans Affairs - over $830 billion. In a distant second place is China, which spent about $84 billion on its military in 2008.

The US also leads the world in the sale of lethal weapons to others, selling about one of every three weapons worldwide. The USA's major clients? South Korea, Israel and United Arab Emirates.

Our country has 5 percent of the world's population, but accounts for more than 40 percent of the military spending for the whole world.

Harm

Our nation does not respect our soldiers by engaging in permanent war. War is grinding up our children. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost over 5,000 US lives and tens of thousands more lives of people in those countries. Over 20 percent of those in our military who served in these two wars, 320,000 people, have war-related traumatic brain injuries. Suicide rates are up by 26 percent among 18- to 29-year-old male veterans in the latest Veterans Administration study. Mental health hospitalizations are now the leading cause of hospital admissions for the military, higher than injuries. On any given night, over 100,000 veterans are homeless and living on our nation's streets.

Rising Costs of War

Since 2001, the US has spent over $6 trillion (a trillion is a million millions) on war and preparations for war. That is about $20,000 for every woman, man and child in the US. Iraq and Afghanistan alone have cost the US taxpayer over a trillion dollars since 2001.

No End in Sight

Earlier this month, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chair of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Army Times that the US can expect continuing war "for as far as the eye can see."

In the name of this perpetual war against terrorism, the US still jails hundreds without trial in Guantanamo, holds hundreds more in prisons on bases and in secret detention worldwide, tries to avoid constitutional trials for anyone accused of terrorism, admits it is trying to assassinate an American citizen Muslim cleric in Yemen and launches deadly drone strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, killing civilians and suspects whenever they decide.

Who Benefits From Permanent War?

One support for permanent war is that there are corporations in the US which openly lobby for more and more money to be invested in war. Why? Because they profit enormously from government contracts.

President Dwight Eisenhower, who believed in a strong military, warned the US about just this in his farewell address to the nation in 1961. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

War Is Big Business

War is very big business. People know that private companies are doing much more in war. In January 2010, the Congressional Research Service reported that there are at least 55,000 private armed security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe many more - as many as 70,000 in Afghanistan alone.

But much bigger money is available to defense contractors. In 2008 alone, the top ten defense contractors received nearly $150 billion in federal contracts. These corporations spent millions to lobby for billions more in federal funds and hired ex-military leaders and ex-officials to help them profit off war.

For example, look at the top three defense contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. They demonstrate why perpetual war is profitable and part of the reason it continues.

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin is the largest military contractor in the world with 140,000 employees, taking in over $40 billion annually, over $35 billion of which comes from the US government. Lockheed Martin boasts that they have increased their dividend payments by more than 10 percent for the seventh consecutive year - perfectly in line with the increase in war spending by the US. Its Chairman Robert Stevens received over $72 million in compensation over the past three years.

Lockheed's board of directors includes a former under secretary of defense, a former US Air Force commander of the US Strategic Command, a former deputy director of Homeland Security and a former supreme allied commander of Europe. These board members receive over $200,000 a year in compensation. Its political action committee gave over a million dollars a year to federal candidates in 2009, and is consistently one of the top spending PACs in the US. They appeal to all members of Congress because they strategically have operations in all 50 states. And since 1998, Lockheed has spent over $125 million to lobby Congress.

Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman is a $33 billion company with 120,000 employees. In 2008, it received nearly $25 billion in federal contracts. Its Chairman Ronald Sugar received over $54 million in compensation over the past three years.

Northrop's Board includes a former admiral of the Navy, a former 20-year member of Congress, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former commissioner of the Security and Exchange Commission and a former US naval officer. The members of its board of directors received over $200,000 each in 2009. Its PAC is listed as making over $700,000 in federal campaign donations in 2009. Since 1998, it has spent over $147 million lobbying Congress.

Boeing

Boeing has 150,000 employees and took in over $23 billion in federal contracts in 2008. With revenues of $68 billion in 2009, its Chair James McNerney was paid over $51 million over the past three years. Its board members are paid well over $200,000 a year. Boeing's directors include a former US secretary of Commerce, a former White House chief of staff, a former vice chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former US ambassador and US trade representative. It hosts the tenth largest political action committee, giving away more than one million dollars to federal candidates in 2009. Since 1998, it has spent $125 million lobbying Congress.

Time to Terminate the Permanent War

These corporations take billions from the government and profit from our perpetual state of war. They recycle some of that money back into lobbying the same people who gave it to them, and hire ex-military and government officials to help smooth the process. Their leaders make tens of millions off this work.

The trillions of dollars that it costs to wage permanent war are taxing the US economy. Yet, where are the voices in Congress, Democrat or Republican, that talk seriously of dramatically reducing our military spending? President Obama and the Democrats are effectively continuing the permanent war policies of the Bush years. It is past time for change.

Remember this Memorial Day that, while thousands have been laid in their graves and hundreds of thousands wounded, private military contractors are prospering and profiting as the business of war booms.

The US should not only remember its dead, but work to reverse the profitable permanent war that promises to add more names to the dead and disabled in this country and around the world.

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How to Create More Terrorists

The following video, which I cannot yet embed, shows an American helicopter gun-ship killing a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad in 2007.

Those killed included two staff members of the Reuters news agency. Two children were also seriously wounded in the attack.

Reuters has been trying without success to obtain the video under America's Freedom of Information Act. On April 5th, the classified video was released by WikiLeaks.

Watch it here and watch American forces recruit more members for al-Qaeda.

Warning, the video is very graphic and disturbing.

Between 2003 and 2009, 139 journalists were killed in Iraq. Professor Scott Lucas at Enduring America has some immediate reaction to the video here.

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More Blackwater Contractors Than Police In Pakistan's Capital?

Everyone's favourite mercenaries - Blackwater, recently re-branded as XE - are operating in large numbers in Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

One local politician has gone as far as to say that he thinks there are more XE contractors in the capital than local police. Maulana Fazlur Rahman is quoted by UPI as stating that there are around 9,000 XE contractors operating in the capital, compared with 7,000 local police.

Before we dismiss the claims of the leader of the JUI Party (which has pro-Taliban leanings) out of hand, it is worth pondering for a moment what it would feel like if 9,000 foreign military contractors (say, from Russia, or China) were operating in London or New York. I think many westerners would find this an appalling prospect.

The development comes the week that the first known American military deaths were announced inside Pakistan.

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Jack Bauer Interrogates Santa Claus

Classic.





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A Brief History of Afghanistan

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Can the Afghan National Army Deliver?

President Obama's hope of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan within 18 months rests upon one key development: the effective training and deployment of the Afghan National Army.

The following video from Guardian Films highlights some of the challenges of this strategy.

Meanwhile, New York-based journalist Tony Karon reports on a number of issues involved in this growing policy of Afghanistination that risk being ignored in the current climate:

• 1 in 4 members of the ANA have left the force in the last year
• only 39,000 troops are considered combat ready
• even fewer have the skill and training necessary to fight the Taliban
• recruits complete a 10-week basic training programme and receive a Kalashnikov at the end. Many desert at this point.
• There is widespread evidence of ex-recruits returning for basic training under a false name - and receiving the $30 paid to such recruits

Ann Jones comments on this phenomenon:

"Some of these circulating soldiers are aging former mujaheddin -- the Islamist fundamentalists the U.S. once paid to fight the Soviets -- and many are undoubtedly Taliban."

"In a country where 40% of men are unemployed, joining the ANA for 10 weeks is the best game in town. It relieves the poverty of many families every time the man of the family goes back to basic training, but it's a needlessly complicated way to unintentionally deliver such minimal humanitarian aid."

• Incidences of drug taking in the national police and army are common. British officers in Helmand province, for instance, have said they estimate up to 60% of the police force are drug users.
  
• incidences of sexual abuse of children by ANA members have, according to some reports, been ignored by NATO military officials. "Some military officers have argued that since it is practised by some Afghans, particularly in Kandahar, then the Canadian Forces should not get involved in what should be seen as a “cultural” issue."

Tony Koran concludes:

"The idea that there are 240,000 Afghans out there with the hearts and souls of Prussian military cadets, who simply need US training in order to turn into the politically neutral professional military who will put their lives on the line for the Karzai state and its infidel patrons is, to put it mildly, somewhat fanciful."

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Be Careful Who You Change Your Money With

Ever searched for a term in google and stumbled upon a site other than you one you expected and had always used?

Unsuspecting searchers run this risk with the popular XE.com online currency converter, described as "the world's most popular currency site" when they google the term "xe". That's because of the recently formed company known as "XE" which provides a rather different service from currency conversion for tourists and businesses.

The other xe company, based in North Carolina, describes its services as International Training, Mobility and Logistics, Innovative Technologies and Professional Resources.

Further light is shed on what these terms include when digging into the sight a little and discovering references to antenna systems, high-tech surveillance equipment, weapons and armor, armored vehicles and a list of current vacancies with the company which include Firearms and Tactics Instructor, Aviation Project Director and Navy Instructor (part-time).

XE is, of course, none other than the old Blackwater security firm, banned by the government of Iraq earlier this year after its involvement in the killings of 11 civilians in Baghdad's Nisur Square on September 16, 2007. Renamed XE this year, a move which had nothing at all to do with its similarity to one of the Internet's most visited sites, the company continues to provide over 900 contractors to the US State Department for various operations.

The XE company is one of the most prominent examples of the growing trend towards the outsourcing and commercialization of war.

And if that weren't bad enough, they don't do currency conversions.

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Obama's Torture Disclosure: a Christian Response

I don't think there's a word I disagree with in Jimmy McCarty's article, responding as a Christian minister to the news that President Obama has ordered a disclosure of the previous administration's legal advice to the CIA on the use of torture.

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War Crime Evidence Against Rumsfeld?

The UN has an "obligation" to investigate whether government officals serving under the Bush administration ordered torture, says United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak.

Former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld is a particular focus of attention: "In our report that we sent to the United Nations, we made it clear that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld clearly authorized torture methods and he was told at that time by Alberto Mora, the legal council of the Navy, ‘Mr. Secretary, what you are actual ordering here amounts to torture.’ So, there we have the clear evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld knew what he was doing but, nevertheless, he ordered torture.”

A cross party Senate report released in December found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody. It said Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation techniques on December 2, 2002 at Guantanamo Bay.

Source: CNN

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The Dude's Got Style

Wow! What is that I'm suddenly breathing?

Oh yeah, it's the breath of fresh air blowing from America.

I am liking day two:

The man is

• closing Guantanamo
• banning torture
  
• affirming trial by jury and the rule of law
  
• stopping waterboarding
• closing CIA secret prisons

And what's that squeaking noise I can hear?

It must be Dick Cheney riding round in angry circles in his wheelchair.

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Quote of the Day

I will marvel at today's election results... when my innocent clients are freed from Guantanamo. I head there tomorrow.

H. Candace Gorman, human rights lawyer.

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Bush Widens America's Afghan War, a Throwback to Cambodia

News that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff are calling for American troops to pursue "extremists" across the Afghan boarder into Pakistan reminds me of the failed US policy in Vietnam when, faced with an unwinnable war, the decision was taken in 1970 to widen its scope into neighbouring Cambodia.

As today in Afghanistan, the situation in south east Asia in 1970 appeared to justify the initiative. Viet Cong forces had extended the Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos and the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh was under threat of communist attack. American forces were vulnerable to attacks originating from within Cambodia and on that basis Commander of US forces in South Vietnam General Creighton Abrams argued for the elimination of their bases on the Cambodian side of the boarder.

Without consulting of informing the Cambodian government of Lon Nol, President Nixon agreed with his General's advice and ordered 20,000 American troops and warplanes across the boarder, announcing on a televised broadcast on April 28th that the future of world peace depended on America's success in Cambodia.

38 years later, and illustrating the maxim that there is nothing new under the sun, we are faced with an American military commander (Admiral Mike Mullen) calling publicly for a military strategy that covers "both sides of the boarder" between Afghanistan and Pakistan, announcing to the House Armed Services Committee that

"In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency....We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan... but until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming."

One can only hope that President Bush resists this call in the final months of his administration - an initiative that will plunge America's only "ally" in the region into complete turmoil and dissipate the remnants of any good will that may exist among the Pakistani population. The evidence so far gives little hope for that outcome:

• in July, President Bush approved orders enabling US Special Operations forces to conduct ground operations in Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistan government
• since April, missile strikes have been carried out on positions within Pakistan, attributed to coalition forces or CIA drones based in Afghanistan - strikes that have killed both Pakistani civilians and militants
• A raid in South Waziristan last week left 15 people dead and prompted Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to strongly criticise the raids and insist that there was no deal allowing foreign troops to conduct operations inside the country: "The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country will be defended at all cost," he added in a statement subsequently backed by the country's Premier Yousaf Raza Gilani.

It seems to be a principle of imperialism that when losing a war, the "arrogance of power" (to quote Senator J. William Fulbright) dictates an expansion of that same war. The Senator's observation from 1966 still seems relevant in 2008:

"Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations — to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence."

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US Aiding Al-Qaeda Inside Iran

Murky, Byzantine, call it what you will. The simple fact is that as the Bush administration winds down towards the end of its second term, pressure for a "regime change" inside Iran is intensifying.

The result, according to one former middle east CIA operative, is that the United States is actively funding resistance groups inside Iran who oppose the current regime. In a tragic repeat of the failed US policy in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Bush administration is trying to undermine the Iranian government by supporting groups with ideological and structural links to Al-Qaeda.

The policy has emerged following last year's decision by the US Congress to provide up to $400 million for "covert operations" inside Iran aimed at gathering intelligence on Iran's nuclear-weapons programme and also destabilizing the country's religious leadership through the active support of a number of radical and minority opposition movements.

The operations are jointly carried out by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and involve partnerships with organisations that under normal circumstances would be enemies in America's war on terror. These include:

• Baluchi nationalists - described by former CIA operative Robert Baer as "Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran" and who also "cut off the heads of nonbelievers - in this case Shiite Iranians." Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists include Ramzi Yousef, jailed for his role in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds behind 9/11. Baer goes on to say, "The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.”

• The Iranian People's Resistance Movement, also known as the Jundallah, is, according to Vali Nasr of Tufts University, “ a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrases as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists. They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” (As an aside, recent drugs raids inside Iran may be part of the ongoing battle between the government and Jundallah.)

• The M.E.K. (Mujahideen-e-Khalq) has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than ten years and yet at present is allegedly in receipt of arms and intelligence from the United States in its proxy war against the Tehran government

• The Kurdish PJAK (Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan) has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for several years and is also in receipt of funding from the US. In recent weeks, there has been a marked increase in the number of PJAK armed engagements with Iranian police and military units.

Source: New Yorker

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US Air Force Chief on Total War

While I believe there is an almost zero chance we will fight a nation-state, I believe there is a near 100 percent chance we are going to fight very sophisticated systems on the land, at sea and in the air.

I believe the best way to deter and dissuade is to be able to wholly dominate the land, sea, air, space and cyber domains.

Recently removed Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley in Air Force Times.





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American Torture - the Evidence Together in One Place

Juan Cole at Informed Comment has brought together a number of reports and articles on the reality of torture by American forces.

Highlights of this excellent resource include:

• interviews with torture victims, including 66 released from Guantanamo without charge
• official medical reports of numerous torture victims
  
• documents from the Senate and CIA that indicate that the policy of torture originated in the White House office
• evidence that many initially arrested and detained in Afghanistan were the victims of personal vendettas prompted by the offer of thousands of dollars of rewards for the capture of suspected Taliban sympathizers

The following video is a taste of what is in Juan Cole's post, which also probes the question, "What now in the legal pursuit of those responsible for the formulation of these policies in contravention of international law?"

An important resource.

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Kucinich Offers Impeachment Articles Against Bush

It won't go anywhere, of course, but at least someone's tried.










For Rep. Kucinich's views that America went to war in Iraq for oil, click here.





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After Five Years, it's Official: Bush Exagerated the Threat Posed by Sadamm

It took five years, but today the US Senate finally published its report into the build up to the invasion of Iraq and the intelligence used to justify the war.

The report concludes that:

• President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence
• The White House ignored disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq's weapons programs
  
• The President ignored doubts about Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda

Senator John Rockefeller IV, Democrat chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said:

"The President and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein."

The real story here, of course, is how powerless the American public seem to be in demanding that those who took the nation into this illegal war be brought to account for their actions.

The full report can be read here.

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Al-Jazeera Camerman Speaks of Guantanamo

When Sami Al Hajj arrived in his native Sudan following his surprise release from Guantanamo Bay, he was too weak to talk.

Here is is first interview about his ordeal.

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