Younge: Americans want U.S. power without cost or risk

Gary Younge is right, American's are schizo, post-Dubya, when it comes to the POTUS and foreign policy:

Obama’s apparent inability to make anything happen on the international stage is unnerving many. Big things keep taking place to which he appears to offer only incremental responses within a strategic void. [...]

Obama’s foreign policy approval ratings, once one of his strengths, are now pitifully low. According to a Pew research survey, more than half of Americans believe that he is insufficiently “tough”. This is partly presentational: Obama has always found showy rhetoric in the face of serious problems hokey. His deliberative style owes more to the constitutional law professor he once was than the leader of the armed forces he now is.

His reputation for “weakness” is also ironic given the number of people Obama has assassinated with drones. [...]

The public actually supports most of what Obama has done. Polls show that a majority of Americans back air strikes against Isis and troop withdrawals from Iraq; the use of drones to kill “suspected terrorists” abroad; and overwhelmingly prefer sanctions over military action against Russia. A plurality believe that Obama is removing troops from Afghanistan at the right pace. But a president is more than the sum of his policies.

As I've said before, I don't think there is an Obama Doctrine, besides, I suppose, "Don't do stupid shit"... whatever, that is, Obama and his inner circle consider to be stupid.

But does every President need a doctrine?  That's a separate question. But one must question how much freedom any POTUS has to make his own strategic choices without succumbing to policy inertia of past presidents. Just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia... The choices and facts on the ground were already made over years if not decades before. But I digress....

Almost certainly what Obama is planning now against Islamic State is not doctrinal; it's reactive to media and public pressure after ISIS killers publicly cut off the heads of American hostages and persecuted Arab Christians. He wouldn't be the first president pushed by the public into military action, but it's certainly no way to run a foreign policy.

Obama's dilemma is America's appetite for power but aversion to political risk

By Gary Younge

September 7, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/4xc5j

An 'orgy of drones' in Yemen

I'm re-posting this article in full because I don't think it made front page news in the U.S. that we launched nine drones strikes in 10 days in Yemen and killed at least 36 "suspected militants."

We absolutely must know about these drone strikes in our name, ostensibly to protect us, that create fear and hatred toward the U.S.

Then we turn around and ask, incredulously, "Why do these crazy Muslims hate America?"

Yemen Drone Strikes Bring New Round Of Terror To Embattled Country

By Joshua Hersh

August 11, 2013 | Huffington Post

On Friday night, Farea al-Muslimi, a young Yemeni journalist and activist, went for a drive with a friend around the capital city of his home, Sanaa.

It was a holiday weekend, the second day of the Muslim holy festival of Eid al-Fitr, and the streets were calm. But what struck al-Muslimi the most as they crossed through the town, was that they hardly encountered any security presence.

"We didn't see a single checkpoint," he told HuffPost. "No one buys the idea that there is a security threat here. They simply don't see it -- I don't see it."

Over the previous week, the United States and other Western nations ramped up terror alerts about Yemen, a small nation on the tip of the Arabian peninsula that attracts a disproportionate amount of American attention. A recent terrorism alert prompting the closures of nearly two dozen American embassies around the Arab world was "emanating from Yemen," the U.S. said, and earlier in the week American citizens were urged to flee Yemen. The staff of the U.S. embassy there was spirited to Germany on a military cargo plane.

However, as the week progressed, signs of terror did not take the form of an attack by al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, an increasingly powerful franchise of the feared terrorist organization, but instead, as Haykal Bafana, a Sanaa-based Yemeni lawyer, put it recently, of an "orgy of drones."

Over the past 10 days, at least nine American drone strikes have been conducted across the country's remote provinces, most recently on Saturday evening. At least 36 people, all of them immediately deemed "suspected militants" by the Yemeni government, were killed, according to wire service counts. On Thursday alone, there were three drone attacks, an unprecedented rate; Saturday's was the fifth in 72 hours.

For those left in Yemen, it has been like living in a universe parallel to the one described in American terror alerts, Bafana said on Saturday. "It's like there are two different Yemens," he said. "The one the U.S. and Yemeni government claims is always under a terrorist threat, and the one we actually live in, with drones. It's like they stepped through the looking glass."

For Farea al-Muslimi, that's meant a week of fear and anger. "You can tell how frustrated the people here are," al-Muslimi said, when reached by phone late on Friday.

Earlier in the week, he said, when an American P-3 Orion spy plane circled over Sanaa for nearly 10 hours, loudly buzzing as residents tried to celebrate the start of Eid, residents stopped in their tracks to protest. "People were standing in the street and screaming at it," he said.

Al-Muslimi became something of an American household name, at least in the relatively small circle of people who monitor America's counter-terrorism policies and drone usage, earlier this year when he live-Tweeted accounts of a drone strike from his family's village, Wessab.

He subsequently traveled to Washington, D.C., where he testified before Congress about the experience, telling lawmakers that drone strikes were destroying America's image in Yemen, and driving ordinary citizens into the arms of al Qaeda and other militants. "What violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike achieved in an instant," he said at the time.

In the ensuing months, amid a growing atmosphere of dissent about the use and abuse of drone warfare in Washington, President Barack Obama found himself compelled to speak publicly about the policy. In a speech in May, he acknowledged America's role in drone strikes and pledged to create a legal framework for oversight of the program.

But The New York Times and others have since reported that the reality in targeted areas like Yemen shows that drone policy is anything but reformed.

In Yemen, there have already been 22 strikes this year, close to the pace in 2012 when Obama ordered a record 42 drone strikes,according to the Long War Journal. And in Pakistan, another frequent target of American drones, there were more strikes in July than in any month since January.

The history of U.S. drone wars in Yemen includes a number of tactical successes, of course, including the strike that killed feared al Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen. But it's also littered with devastating failures: innocent families and children have been hit by misguided missiles, first-aid responders have found themselves targeted by a practice known as "double-tapping," and even some prominent anti-al Qaeda clerics have been assassinated.

The day after Obama was reelected for his second term, for instance, he ordered a strike that killed a tribal leader known for negotiating with al Qaeda militants to reduce their lethality. More recently, officials acknowledged that a strike last summer killed Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, a popular sheik who a few days earlier delivered a sermon on the evils of al Qaeda.

Mohammed al-Qadhi, a Sanaa-based Yemeni journalist, said that so far there is no conclusive evidence that the current attacks killed innocents. Others, including Bafana, who tracks the strikes through his own network, said the first strikes last week in Hadhramauat killed at least four civilians, including a child.

Either way, al-Qadhi said the latest strikes are producing an uptick in popular discontent and protest -- on Facebook and Twitter, in the targeted villages, and at the now-vacant American embassy in Sanaa.

"People feel they don't have a government anymore," al-Qadhi said by phone. "They feel we don't have a government to attack the militants, so the Americans are handling it for us, and they are encroaching onto the sovereignty of Yemen."

The killings, he added, "may be good for Americans but in the end it doesn't solve the problem completely, especially if some civilians are killed. It just creates a kind of sympathy with al Qaeda. And I think al Qaeda will not stop attacking. I think they will retaliate, and they will fire back again in retaliation to these attacks."

The practitioners of America's counterterrorism strategy also sometimes seem at a loss to explain the U.S. policy's objectives.

“It’s too early to tell whether we’ve actually disrupted anything,” a top U.S. official told The Washington Post this week, of the most recent round of strikes. “What the U.S. government is trying to do here is to buy time."

To al-Muslimi, the return of drone warfare almost reflects an aimlessness among American policymakers. "Just like troubled teenagers with bad parents might run to the addiction of drugs and alcohol when it has problems, Americans are running to drones when they have terrorism problems," he said. "Alcohol makes you forget your failures, and for the Americans it seems like drones are for when they want to forget their counter-terrorism failures. It's senseless."

Meanwhile, he said, this week's action may have made some Americans feel better, but it's only increasing the sense of terror in Yemen.

"When there is a normal war, people can hide, or they can stay away from the military -- they can make choices and be careful," al-Muslimi said."But when drones come, you just don't know when you'll be next. The fear is incredible."

Cornel West: Obama's racism speech hypocritical, too late

Brother West was having none of President Obama's bland and measured post-post-trial statement on the "not guilty" verdict of George Zimmerman, the killer of Trayvon Martin:  

I think we have to recognize that [President Obama] has been able to hide and conceal that criminalizing of the black poor as what I call the re-niggerizing of the black professional class. You’ve got these black leaders on the Obama plantation, won’t say a criminal word about the master in the big house, will only try to tame the field folk so that they’re not critical of the master in the big house. That’s why I think even Brother Sharpton is going to be in trouble. Why? Because he has unleashed—and I agree with him—the rage. And the rage is always on the road to self-determination. But the rage is going to hit up against a stone wall. Why? Because Obama and Holder, will they come through at the federal level for Trayvon Martin? We hope so. Don’t hold your breath. And when they don’t, they’re going to have to somehow contain that rage. And in containing that rage, there’s going to be many people who say, "No, we see, this president is not serious about the criminalizing of poor people." We’ve got a black leadership that is deferential to Obama, that is subservient to Obama, and that’s what niggerizing is. You keep folks so scared. You keep folks so intimidated. You can give them money, access, but they’re still scared. And as long as you’re scared, you’re on the plantation.

Most liberal and moderate pundits gave Obama high marks for his unprepared remarks last week about being a black man in America.  Nevertheless, it's kind of pathetic that we need our President to interpret the African-American experience for us.  If you're black, you already know about it. If you're white, and you don't acknowledge your own prejudices, then you're kidding yourself and lying to everybody else.  So who was Obama addressing, the history books?

Cornel West: Obama’s Response to Trayvon Martin Case Belies Failure to Challenge "New Jim Crow"

Interview with Amy Goodman

July 22, 2013 | Democracy Now!

URL: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/22/cornel_west_obamas_response_to_trayvon

Wilkerson: Drones destroy 'warrior ethic'

I'm still going back & forth on drones.  Here Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Gen. Colin Powell's former chief of staff and a critic of the "sexed up" intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion, and some other guy offer some new objections to America's use of drones that I've never heard before.

For one, drones destroy what Wilkerson calls the U.S. military's "warrior ethos" [bold mine]:

At one stroke, the drone has destroyed any positive image of the United States in the countries over which it operates. It has contributed to the destruction of the tribal codes of honor, such as Pukhtunwali among the Pukhtun tribes of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And this immorality and destructive nature reflects back on those who use it, harming the warrior ethic of the American military so critical to battlefield bonding among soldiers in combat.

The warrior ethos may be largely a myth but, like most myths, it protects something very important: the psychology of killing in the name of the state. That killing becomes nothing less than murder when the soldier doing it is utterly invulnerable. Most US citizens, so long divorced from any responsibility to take up arms and fight and kill, do not understand this. Soldiers – good ones – do. Such understanding was behind the recent cancellation by Secretary of Defense Hagel of the valor award for drone operators. 

Likewise, Wilkerson argues that drones deprive our victims, most of them located in tribal communities with ancient codes of honor, of the chance to defend themselves or fight back.  We can imagine that their pent-up frustration would lead to more terrorist recruits and increased danger to the U.S.:

However precise the weapon, this is the reality and the price on the ground, destroying the codes so vital to both parties involved – those who are targets and the people who see them die and the operators at their computer terminals. The use of the drone is creating more problems than it is solving.

In the defense of drones I will say this: they are just a weapon. We also employ air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missiles from so far away that our enemies have no chance to strike back.  And these missiles can also strike without warning and cause collateral damage.  There are also Howitzer artillery pieces with a range of about 25 km.  The principle is the same. This is not to mention our nuclear weapons that can erase entire communities.  (And the U.S. is still the only country to have used nuclear weapons.)  Or our cyber weapons deployed by nerds sitting at computers thousands of miles away.  

So if we're going to say that drones are somehow "dishonorable," unfair or causing dangerous rage in the communities whose hearts and minds we want to win over to our side, then we also have to include all these other impersonal, remote-controlled weapons that bring death from the sky.

In criticism of drones I will say that they have the unintended (?) psychological effect of creating terror.  Imagine if you are not a terrorist, and yet you hear drones buzzing above you everyday without end, and you know that an errant missile could kill you or your innocent friends and family any second, day or night.  How would you feel about that?  You would be terrified or outraged or both!

Again, let's remember that drone strikes are happening where the U.S. is not at war and often violating national sovereignty.  Drones may have no "physical" footprint but they certainly have a moral, psychological and legal footprint in the countries where they attack.

Wilkerson is definitely right about one thing: America is overdue for a public debate about the use of drones, and everybody should be asked to weigh in -- citizens, politicians, academics, human rights advocates, lawyers, the military, and even victims' advocates.  We can't simply trust Obama or any POTUS to handle this responsibility himself.

UPDATE (05.07.2013): Here's a HuffPo article, "Obama Drone War 'Kill Chain' Imposes Heavy Burden At Home," that offers another drawback of drones: the psychological toll it takes on the the military intelligence officers who sift through data and watch computer screens all day to identify targets.  Apparently it's not just like playing a video game.  These military operators work 12-hour shifts, live under constant pressure for perfection, struggle with constant doubt and fear of deadly mistakes, and so their burnout rate is high.

Dealing remote-control drone death, the US has lost its moral compass

By Akbar Ahmed and Lawrence Wilkerson

May 4, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3ft2e

Thoughts on fighting terrorism

I would like President Obama and Congress to lay down a few markers for U.S. citizens and the rest of the world, because the "Great War on Terrorism" (GWOT) is hopelessly muddled and prone to overreach.

First, in operational terms, the most important marker is that any terrorist group that we take action against must present a clear and present danger to the United States, because that is the measure by which we decide whether to take military action against other sovereign states. And as a practical matter, we must look where such terrorists are based. If they are acting in a sovereign state -- as they are most likely to do -- then we must act only with the permission of that state. Failure to act militarily without that state's permission would be a violation of that state's sovereignty. There is hardly any act more serious that the United States could undertake. Violating another country's sovereignty should never be done lightly, and never without clear consultations with said state. And again, as a practical matter, we should be extremely wary of violating any country's sovereignty, since they are prone to take the most extreme actions against us in response. The United States would do no less if the shoe were on the other foot.

Second, we must always make a clear distinction between state-sponsored terrorism and non-state-sponsored terrorism.

Bitter experience has taught us that non-state terrorists flourish in failed or failing states, like maggots in a rotting corpse. Such groups present a novel and special challenge to the United States.  We know now that terrorist groups often hope that the U.S. will choose to put boots on the ground in failed states. Such groups flock to failed or failing states; in the first case for refuge and operational freedom; in the latter case often to foment total state failure to secure such operational freedom.  

Furthermore, terrorist groups know that our presence in such states will provide them with ready and abundant targets in confusing environments where our rules of engagement are muddled and lead to the killing of combatants and innocent non-combatants alike. Terrorists do not care about non-combatants. Indeed they hope that innocents will be killed by indiscriminate use of American force, since such killings tend to bolster their recruitment and win over public opinion to their side.

State-sponsored terrorism, by contrast, is war by other, indirect means by our adversaries in other sovereign states.  Where we can make a solid connection between the actions of terrorists against the U.S. and the states who sponsor them, then the U.S. should have the right to respond appropriately, up to and including military force against the sponsor state.  The U.S. has made it fairly clear that it will hold state sponsors accountable. So this is not the real problem. 

The main condition is that we must avoid conflating the two types of terrorism.  The second condition is that our government should never fail to provide evidence of a clear and present danger to the United States (or its allies) before authorizing military force against non-state or state-sponsored terrorists, or the states who sponsor terrorists.  

The U.S. Constitution makes no reference to terrorism. Terrorism did not exist in the late 18th century.  It is a modern phenomenon. Nevertheless, the principle set down in the Constitution that the President must seek permission from Congress to declare war should still apply in the case of terrorist organizations.  Our Founding Fathers' fear was not that the U.S. would make war against private individuals as opposed to other sovereign states; rather, our Founders were afraid that the Executive would deploy U.S. forces indiscriminately and non-judiciously. The same fear, the same likelihood, exists with regard to traditional warfare as it does with non-traditional counter-terrorism military operations.

What happens when everybody has drones?

As I said, I go back and forth on drones. They are some middle ground between doing nothing in the face of non-state terrorist groups and putting U.S. boots on the ground to futilely occupy countries where terrorists hide. Certainly the U.S. needs legal guidelines to check executive whims, especially when drones are used in countries where the U.S. does not have any other military presence. Drones are clearly a violation of other nations' sovereignty.

Beyond that, should the U.S. seek an international treaty or convention on drones?  Chances are other nations won't use them like we do. They won't have 200 analysts and decision-makers poring over the real-time data. No, they will use the drones for targeted killings on their borders, in their own tribal areas, and against near neighbors, and they won't sweat the details.

When the Whole World Has Drones

By Kristin Roberts

March 21, 2013 | National Journal

URL: http://mobile.nationaljournal.com/magazine/when-the-whole-world-has-drones-20130321?page=1

Rosenberg: Obama's better-managed empire

Here's how Rosenberg sums up the lost promise of Obama's presidency, at least when it comes to America's foreign wars:

It's tragic, really. Obama certainly has the capacity to comprehend the sea of troubles he is sailing on, but he lacks the will, desire, and imagination to steer America into a fundamentally different direction. He cannot even begin to conceive of "no war" as an option - indeed, as Martin Luther King would say, as the only option. He is America's "leader" in a decidedly limited, managerial sense, when history and the American people had cried out for so much more - dare I say it? - For a visionary... Or at least for a leader along the path that visionaries have lit before us. Instead, Obama is a go-along-to-get-along president who shares virtually all of the imperial operational mindsets, even as the ever-mounting costs of empire are tearing the American republic apart. Virtually all the aberrations from constitutional government that the neocons under Bush advanced have been continued under Obama, thus confirming them as bipartisan aberrations.

Which is why, tragically, it's America, indulging its own demons, that continues to make al-Qaeda's case, in a way that nobody else possibly can - certainly not al-Qaeda itself.

It's not America alone, of course. It's simply the way of empire.

The lost promise of Barack Obama

A smarter empire is no substitute for a lost republic.

By Paul Rosenberg

February 19, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013217838625713.html

Back and forth on drones

I go back and forth on drones.  But I'm starting to go in favor.  Why?  Because it seems that today's armed Islamist militants (and they do exist, just not in the numbers some think) have a two-pronged strategy:

1) Seek "safe" haven in unstable countries (the irony is the more dangerous the country, the safer al Qaeda and other flag-less militants are there), and further destabilize these countries with their terrorist attacks;

2) Tempt the U.S. to put troops in these unstable countries so that the Islamist militants can take pot shots at them.

There are too many unstable countries these days; and the U.S. already has too few troops to cover two ongoing occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Anyway, putting boots on the ground is a losing strategy.  We know it, they know it.  When we come in, all they have to do is wait us out.  And occupations are damn expensive when austerity is in vogue.  

And so drones are one answer to our dilemma.  Drones aren't the only answer; nor should they be used willy-nilly; but I think it's right to keep on using them.

Look, countries that harbor or can't control the Islamist militants among them who operate with impunity -- like in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, etc. -- need to know that if they can't take care of free-ranging terrorist groups then then we will, in our own way.  For example, how many years has the U.S. begged Pakistan to do something about the Taliban, to no avail?  

Yes, I admit, drone strikes are a violation of other countries' sovereignty.  And even if our drones don't rile up the masses there, then they certainly tick off government officials in the country getting droned, because drones reveal they're incapable of stopping the U.S. from doing what it wants.  It's humiliating to them.  On the other hand, drones are a clear indication that we have no intention of occupying and ruling these countries; we just want to destroy the bad guys.  (Unfortunately we often kill a lot of innocent people in the process.)

So in this messy world we live in where the choices range between two poles -- do nothing; or invade and occupy -- drones are some kind of middle ground.  Are they morally and ethically OK?  Um, probably not.  But then most wars aren't.  

Kurt Volker's most disturbing point -- a question, really -- is what happens when countries like China, Iran and Russia start using drones how they see fit?  Will the U.S. have a moral or legal leg to stand on in opposing them?  I don't know.

Kurt Volker: The risks of relying on drones

By Kurt Volker

October 27, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/SHcw26

The Drone Wars

You gotta give Ohio's Dennis Kucinich credit for his consistency. He doesn't hesitate to criticize Obama or his own party when principle compels him.

It's worth pondering that Obama has killed way more people -- innocents and combatants alike -- with drone attacks in two years than Dubya did in eight.

Drones only seem to bypass international law and state sovereignty. Much as we may hate to admit it, their use in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia is illegal, and could be construed as an act of war by the United States. More than that, they undermine America's moral authority and turn peaceful people against us.

Is it time to can the drones?

Drones Direct Hit Upon Rule Of Law

By Rep. Dennis Kucinich

August 17, 2011 | Huffington Post

The Obama Administration continues to use unmanned drones as a tool of war - a tool that according The New York Times, the Administration claims has killed 600 militants in Pakistan and no civilians since May 2010. But the math doesn't add up. Nor does the policy.

Think of the use of drone air strikes as summary executions, extra-judicial killings justified by faceless bureaucrats using who-knows-what "intelligence," with no oversight whatsoever and you get the idea that we have slipped into spooky new world where joystick gods manipulating robots deal death from the skies and then go home and hug their children. Everything America was once said to stand for: the rule of law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is in danger of becoming collateral damage as our fearful leaders continue to kill suspects and innocent alike, mindlessly unaware that the hellfire we are sowing will surely be reaped by Americans in the future. The proliferation of drone technology and its inevitable extension to civilian law enforcement is a leap into the arms of Big Brother.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently estimated that at least 2,292 people have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. The Bureau determined that of that number, over 350 are civilians. A July 2009 Brookings Institution report stated ten civilians die for every one suspected militant from U.S. drone strikes. Yet another study by the New American Foundation concluded that out of 114 drone attacks in Pakistan, at least 32% of those killed by the strikes were civilians.

President Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones over the past several years, authorizing more drone strikes during his first fifteen months in office than President Bush did during the entirety of his eight years in office. In addition to the use of drones in Pakistan, the Administration has authorized strikes in Yemen and Somalia. The increasing reliance on drones and the lack of recourse for the families of innocent civilians that are killed by such strikes demonstrate the impunity with which the U.S. uses this technology.

Drone attacks undermine our moral standing in the world. They foment anger and resentment toward the United States. We have spent years in Afghanistan and Iraq under the guise of nurturing democracy and the rule of law while at the same time, our use of unmanned drones severely undermines the rule of law.

Challenging the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan and calling to light their indiscriminate nature is vital to prevent a dangerous precedent from being set that would allow international law and the laws of war to be stretched to justify strikes elsewhere. The legal justification for their use in Pakistan can and will be used to justify their use in other countries. Under this legal framework, the battlefield could be stretched to include anywhere in the world. Anywhere.