ISIS is Islamic, but we should still shut up about them

Islam has never been united. For one thing, there is no Muslim pontiff who speaks for the world's 1.6 billion Muslims living on six continents. Yet even the Roman Catholic Pope speaks for only about half of the world's 2.2 billion Christians; and millions of those Catholics choose to disregard him on such crucial matters of the faith as birth control, premarital sex, divorce and gay relationships. 

If we sat down and took a deep breath, we'd all admit that there is no perfect, ideal version of Catholicism, or Christianity for that matter, that exists separately from the people who call themselves Christians. Anybody who says he is Christian and practices some form of the faith, no matter how strange, is a Christian. Attempts to label practitioners on the margins of a faith as "heretics" or "not true believers" has been tried, will continue to be tried, in vain. It only comes with conflict, violent schisms, cults and new denominations.

The same is true of Islam, with its Sufi, Sunni, Shia branches... and a bunch of sects and sub-sects that I don't know or understand. It is diverse and always changing.

ISIS in particular, with upwards of 30,000 fighters, or about 0.00002 % of the world's Muslims, is Islamic, just as they claim. A dark and evil part, but a part of Islam nonetheless. Just as violent white supremacists in the KKK or Branch Davidians are indeed part of the Christian pageant, because they profess themselves to be so. You or I can stand aloof and say they're not, but Christianity is what Christians do; Islam is what Muslims do; including all the good and bad. These religions are not what some sacred texts say. We can't just define away the behaviors -- and the believers -- that we don't accept as pure or "mainstream." (Although millions of believers will continue to do just that, to the detriment of world peace and understanding....)

Likewise, the U.S. should not -- and I'm thinking of Barack Obama specifically but before him scores of prominent conservatives -- engage in pointless, unwinnable schismatic debates about who is or isn't Islamic. It's apparent why both sides are tempted to do so: conservatives want to stoke xenophobic fear among Americans that justifies, post facto, their wars of choice in the Mideast and continued spying and infringements on our civil and constitutional liberties; and President Obama, in response, wants to calm Americans' nerves, and avoid antagonizing one-fifth of the globe, including America's peaceful 2 million+ Muslims. Conservatives' anti-Islamic argument is mean and stupid on its face; Obama is stupid for engaging seriously with stupidity.

Just as our arguing that ISIS is not Islamic does not seem to affect their appeal to disaffected recruits from all over the world, nor does our paying so much attention to ISIS hurt their cause. Just the opposite. When the most powerful nation in the history of the world -- not to mention the "Great Satan" -- declares that ISIS is scary and powerful, it's the best possible endorsement for the Islamic State's recruitment and fundraising efforts.   

Keeping a cool head and maintaining perspective on global threats are responsibilities of being a superpower. We must be serious when choosing our enemies, and more serious in how we fight them. That doesn't automatically mean all guns -- and mouths -- ablazing.

I've said it before: With all of its vast power, the U.S. shouldn't say that ISIS is an "existential threat," "clear and present danger," or anything of the kind.  It's the equivalent of a well-armed huntsman hyperventilating at a swarm of mosquitoes. 

Since 9/11, almost no leaders of any political stripe are willing to say the truth: We cannot defend ourselves against every attack on U.S. soil by extremists, especially by lone wolf terrorists inspired by the Internet and driven by deep personal resentments and/or violent mental illness. (ISIS's forte.)  And especially against those attacks on U.S. soil that require very little coordination or preparation (that could tip off domestic spies), and make use of readily available weapons of mass terror: assault-type weapons, ammunition, and bomb-making ingredients.  

In October 2002, I grasped this sad fact immediately and personally during the DC sniper attacks. The terrorists, who everyone was sure must be al Qaeda, ended up being a disgruntled, mentally disturbed Army vet (the sniper) and his impressionable teenage nephew (the spotter and getaway driver).  They were armed only with a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. They killed 17 people and wounded 10 others, and perhaps worse, caused widespread terror in several states before they were caught, by selecting victims at gas stations and shoppers in parking lots, two of the commonest places in American life. That's how easy terrorism is. And there's nothing stopping anybody today from doing exactly the same thing. Nothing. Nowadays we just have a few more cameras around that anyway wouldn't pick up snipers tucked away in the distance.... 

Our leaders continue to lie to us that by eliminating (as in 100%!) the threat of Islamist extremism "over there," and oppressing the peaceful Muslims at home, we can keep ourselves safe "over here."  In fact, by persecuting Muslims at home, and making stupid wars of choice over there, we make Americans less safe over here, in ways that we've witnessed numerous times. (In a word: blowback).  And worse, we who usually refuse to trust our leaders, who know they tell us what we what we want to hear, choose to believe their lies. (The 240,000-employee strong Dept. of Homeland Security, which didn't exist prior to 9/11, the NSA, the Pentagon's top brass, and the military-intelligence contractors getting $285 billion a year certainly thank us for our choice!)  We should know better.

When influential bloviators like Glenn Beck, and even conservatives that I know, say that radical Islam is one of America's most dire problems, nobody dares laugh at them. Yet if I said the KKK was something every U.S. Presidential candidate should propose a plan to fight, I'd be laughed out of town. Never mind that there are upwards of 3,000 Klan members in the U.S., in all 50 states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, as opposed to 100 or fewer members of ISIS in the United States, according to the Pentagon.

Either way it's like arguing which is worse, the mosquito or the fly. The West, in particular the United States, has many more important problems to address. 

Publicly, we should ignore ISIS; outside the public eye of cameras and journalists, we should fight ISIS seriously but in proportion to the threat they pose, in the time and manner of our own choosing, and not have our actions be driven by the release of disgusting YouTube videos.

U.S. offers up 'war reserves' to rearm Israel's killing machine

From the standpoint of U.S. security against terrorism, this is the stupidest policy imaginable: supplying the Israelis with "emergency" munitions to help them finish their slaughter of Palestinian civilians (over 1,300 and counting... meanwhile Israel has lost 3 civilians).

The Arab-Muslim world sees Israel's crimes in Gaza and it outrages them.  Meanwhile, the U.S. does not stand innocently apart from this killing; and we're not an honest broker. We are an accessory before the fact to Israel's murder and violation of international laws and norms (such as demolishing crowded schools and shelling street markets).

If my American friends -- especially conservatives -- could do the mental heavy-lifting to put themselves in an Arab's shoes for a minute, then perhaps they would understand why $ billions of U.S. military aid to Israel is nowadays an awfully dangerous (not to mention immoral) policy for America.

The blowback potential is enormous. Right now, Uncle Sam is recruiting hundreds if not thousands of soldiers for al Qaeda and other Islamist groups.

UPDATE (31.07.2014): Here's another Reuters article that shows the desperation of Palestinian civilians that have nothing to do with Hamas or attacks on Israel, yet they are being targeted by Israel's military: "Under fire and out of cash, U.N. overwhelmed by Gaza crisis." Meanwhile, UN officials are in tears, powerless to help them all.

U.S. resupplies Israel with munitions as Gaza offensive rages

By Phil Stewart and Patricia Zengerle

July 30, 2014 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0FZ2EY20140730

U.S. foreign policy must be moral as well as prudent

This entire op-ed by Harvard professor Joseph Nye is worth reading. I especially liked his comparison of Bush 41 vs. Bush 43 [emphasis mine]:

When we cannot be sure how to improve the world, prudence becomes an important virtue, and grandiose visions can pose a grave danger. This is sometimes forgotten by those who want Obama to place bigger bets in the revolutions of today’s Middle East. It is one thing to try to nudge events at the margins and assert our values in the long term; it is another to think we can shape revolutions we do not fully understand. There is a difference between a limited punishment of Syria for breaking an international taboo on the use of chemical weapons and becoming involved in a civil war. In foreign policy, as in medicine, it is important to first do no harm. Bush 41, who lacked the ability to articulate a vision but was able to steer through crises, turned out to be a better leader than his son, who had a powerful vision but little contextual intelligence about the region he tried to reshape.

Definitely I agree with Nye that prudence is the word of the day -- of the decade -- in U.S. foreign policy.  We'll be paying for Dubya's imprudence in Afghanistan and Iraq for decades to come. What I disagree with is Nye's America-first view on foreign policy that naturally gives U.S. presidents the right or the option to intervene militarily wherever they wish, as long as their "big bets" show promising odds of success over there -- success as defined by us, over here. 

What Nye and others don't realize is that we are in a new era, a new wave of democratization, now continuing in the Arab-Muslim world. The arc of history bends toward democracy. The U.S. has played no small role in that. (Pat self on back). So anybody straining against that arc will feel the pain, eventually. That goes for the U.S. at home or interfering abroad.

Egypt offers preliminary evidence that Arab-Muslims refuse to go back to dictatorship.  They've had a taste of revolution and they liked it.  Certainly I disagree with the way the Egyptian military with the support of some Egyptians ousted the democratically elected President Morsi, even while I sympathize with their grievances against him.  The street protests of an active urban minority proved very effective, but it was hardly democratic or representative of the wishes of 84 million Egyptians.  Nevertheless, what did we immediately see thereafter? The Egyptian military promised fresh elections.  We'll see if the generals follow through on their promise -- and the U.S. should pressure them hard to do so -- or if the interim government will ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a political party. Nevertheless, the point is that a "new normal" has been established: elections, democracy.  Baby steps.  

Hence, Nye rightly reminds America to think of revolutions in terms of decades, not weeks or years, and to "first do no harm."  But Nye is old-fashioned in his chauvinistic belief that the U.S. can intervene boldly in other nation's affairs and still be lucky enough to avoid blowback.  No.  The world has changed. Everything happening everywhere is known to everybody; and small voices can have huge ripple effects in unexpected places.  Like our back yard.

More importantly, we must graciously accept that the international institutions of peace, national sovereignty and democracy that America helped to build in the 20th century increasingly constrain U.S. foreign policy options as they gather power and widespread recognition. That is a good thing for everybody, the U.S. included. We shouldn't struggle against those reassuring bonds; we shouldn't strain to unbend that just arc.

What I'm getting at, finally, is a plea for a moral foreign policy based on U.S values.  Yes, really and truly.  Not just words to that effect, but deeds. That is the way.  

Many will say I'm naive.  But I say: isn't it in fact naive to think anymore, post-911, that we can make agreements with dictators and hope to maintain control, through them, over millions of angry and oppressed people?  People with access to the Internet, and weapons, and relatives, friends and sympathizers all over the world?  OK, maybe for a while.  But then what?  All that anger will burst forth eventually... and do we really want to bear the brunt of it?  

No.  We must be respected by the people of the world, and not just their leaders.  And we can do that only by leading with our values that we believe are universal (and in fact God-given) and that lead to the greater happiness of all mankind.  If we really believe that, and we're right, then America should prevail.  If we only pay lip service to our values outside U.S. borders, or think they are only for white Christians surrounded by two oceans, then... By all means, let's rely on old-fashioned realpolitik and brute force to get what we want.  But then we shouldn't be shocked or outraged when others resent us or even try to kill us in response; and no more asking ourselves, then, in a pitiful mockery of self-reflection, Why do they hate us?

The foreign policy risk behind the Arab revolutions

By Joseph S. Nye Jr.

August 31, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17sysWe

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."

Elite 'liberal' media slants toward war in Syria

Lately, I've been posting op-eds and editorials from the "liberal" Washington Post about Syria because it shows how strong is the consensus of Left-Right elite opinion in America that the U.S. Government must be actively involved and "leading" in every conflict zone in the world, but especially in the Middle East.  

The good news is, 70 percent of Americans oppose the U.S. sending weapons to Syria's "good" rebels.  Only 20 percent favor it.  

Whereas elite U.S. opinion makers believe that President Obama should "lead" on Syria, which is elite-speak for "ignore public opinion." 

Some opinion elites might argue that 80 percent of Americans doesn't really understand what's at stake in Syria.  But the onus is on them -- and President Obama, if he wants to get the U.S. military involved -- to explain to us what's at stake.  Myself I have been following developments there and I cannot say what vital U.S. interests are at stake in Syria.  Sure, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia are supporting Assad, but if Assad prevails, then they will have only paid dearly in materiel and diplomatic face to preserve the status quo ante.  As noted CNN/Time's Fareed Zakaria, one of the few "big thinkers" on foreign policy in the mainstream media:

Contrary to much of the media commentary, the fact that Iran and Hezbollah are sending militias, arms, and money into Syria is not a sign of strength. It is a sign that they are worried that the Syrian regime might fall and are desperately seeking to shore it up. Keeping them engaged and pouring resources into Syria weakens them substantially.

Unlike Iran and Hezbollah, Russia might yet enjoy the additional moral satisfaction of having publicly stood up to America and gotten its way, but so what? Let Russia choose its battles; we'll choose ours.  

Even if we believe some of our interests are at stake in Syria, we now understand too well the potential for sectarian war, U.S. escalation, and eventual terrorist blowback in our faces.  So far, the costs of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan have far outweighed any benefits.  And two years after Gadhafi's death and NATO intervention, Libya is a tribal-sectarian basketcase.  Why should Syria be any different?    

Some pundits are still trying their best to convince us.  For example, WaPo's Jim Hoagland actually warned us, quoting an unnamed French diplomat, "that a loss of U.S. credibility in Syria will encourage Iran to intensify its quest for nuclear weapons."  Really?  If we don't get involved in Syria then Iran will develop nuclear weapons?  Gimme a break!

This argument is the last refuge of neoconservative scoundrels.  Think what he's saying: the U.S. must lead in every instance or forfeit its right to lead in necessary instances.  This is the road to empire, overreach and collapse.

Hoagland's main cheapshot argument is that Obama is worried about his presidential legacy: Obama wants to be known for getting us out of two wars, not starting a third one in Syria.  But even if it's true, what's so wrong with that?  

It's too bad Hoagland and the Washington Post's editorial board don't read the Washington Post's news section:

The difference this time is that the mobilization [of foreign fighters] has been stunningly rapid — what took six years to build in Iraq at the height of the U.S. occupation may have accumulated inside Syria in less than half that.

For Syria's neighbors, the conflict in Syria has become a Sunni-Shia regional war by proxy.  And the U.S. is injecting itself into this sectarian divide, taking the Sunnis' side... that incidentally includes al-Qaeda.

Next, let's take the "liberal" New York Times' Thomas Friedman, America's biggest "big thinker" on foreign policy, (God help us).  In his latest op-ed, Friedman gives two options for U.S. actions in Syria.  Conspicuously, not arming the rebels is not one of those options.  This is how elite opinion-makers do their black magic: they give a sense of inevitability to U.S. military action. 

Friedman actually describes the "idealist approach" to Syria (option #2) as putting U.S. boots on the ground and doing another Iraq debacle, er, occupation.  This is what "idealists" want in Tom Friedman's mind!  Who are these people?!

Next, for the record let's note that the "liberal" Chicago Tribune also supports America's arming Syria's "good" rebels.  But the Tribune holds onto the very slim hope that those arms will force a stalemate and Syria's President Assad to the negotiating table.  (I should note that the Tribune's owner, McClatchy Newspapers, has been doing excellent reporting on Syria.)

Likewise the "liberal" Boston Globe also agrees with President Obama's decision to arm Syria's rebels, although it urges mommy-like "caution" and "care" in doing so: "Now you be careful playing with those guns, rebels!  Don't shoot at anybody who doesn't shoot at your first.  And remember, we're not giving these weapons to you because we hate Shiites; and don't give them to terrorists!"  Pathetic.     

Some of you may say I'm getting too worked up about a few U.S. weapons to Syria.  Maybe so.  Maybe this is a classic Obama maneuver: appearing to do something while actually doing nothing.  According to the New York Times, "Mr. Obama expressed no confidence it would change the outcome, but privately expressed hope it might buy time to bring about a negotiated settlement."

However, once he involves the U.S. and puts his and our nation's credibility on the line, President Obama will be under immense international pressure and pressure from Congress to turn the tide against Assad's forces.  Then he (we) could be "dragged into an escalating level of support: from light arms to anti-tank weapons to a no-fly zone and so on" ... and so forth, up to putting U.S. boots on the ground -- the "idealist" outcome for the Friedmanites, but the nightmare scenario for Americans.

For admirable lessons on U.S. military restraint vis-a-vis Syria (and Iran), you have to look past the major U.S. newspapers and read stuff like...Daniel Larison at The American Conservative.  

I know, I know, these are strange times....

Sovereign nation states, Mideast and GWOT

Lemme try to boil this down a bit.  It's written by an eggheaded, blame-America-first Princeton professor with an axe to grind, to be sure, but there's some really good stuff in here nevertheless.

The main thing is Prof. Mayer's comparison (albeit tortured) of the present Middle East with Westphalian Europe in mid-17th century.  

The point is that, as every poly sci major knows, the Peace of Westphalia and the end of the Thirty Years War heralded the dawn of the modern European nation-state, and the principle of sovereignty of states that we hold so dear today, in the UN and international law.  You could even say that state sovereignty is the sine qua non of international law; without it, you have the jungle where the strong prey upon the weak.  What Westphalia did, in essence, was start the process whereby the strong nations acknowledged the weak nations' right to exist and govern their own affairs, and furthermore, strong states acknowledged it was in their own best interests (i.e. the interests of peace) to do so.  Because we're all interconnected.    

Prof. Mayer reminds us that the development of Westphalian-European nation-states was a pretty bloody, God-awful process in relative historical terms.  Furthermore, he sees a similar process happening now in the Middle East... although the borders of those nation-states were drawn by colonial powers that then did not take into account pesky things like historically who controlled what region, what religious sects dominated those regions, etc.  He hopes that this process, about 300 years later, won't be as bloody.  

In these "violent towel heads'" defense, one could argue that the borders were drawn up by Western powers precisely to divide up awkwardly those "natural" borders and institutionalize conflict in a "divide and rule" philosophy.  This is important to understand because the non-European Middle East (that's redundant but I'll say it nonetheless for emphasis) never had a "Westphalia moment" where it felt the need to draw up strict state borders.  Their borders were more organic and understood, and enforced by tradition and local force.  (And this is one reason why Palestinians who hark from present-day Israel are screwed to this day).

So what does all this mean for the U.S.?  It means that, to compound the complexity of the "Great War on Terror" (GWOT) against nebulous non-state actors that don't recognize governments or borders, we have the wonderful complexity of Arab-Mideast nation-states with poorly drawn borders whose peoples don't necessarily pledge allegiance to those nation-states where they live, but rather to their tribe, religious sect, ethnic group, etc.  This fact strikes our post-Westphalia western minds as horribly backward and primitive and yet that is what Europe was like until the 1600's.  

To sum up, this makes America's defining the terroristic enemy awfully hard.  Even if the U.S. can manage to win cooperation with Mideast nation-states, there is little or no guarantee that local populations will go along with the program.  Again, this throws a monkey wrench into our whole military-diplomatic modus operandi, whereby our political leaders meet with their political leaders over whom we exert some diplomatic, military or economic leverage, and who in return give us certain guarantees.  As the Arab Spring showed us, those guarantees are conditional at best, and blowback-worthy at worst. Because, while our leaders may be viewed as legitimate by their home polities, the Arab-Middle East leaders' polities may simply scoff.    

What all this tells me is that the U.S. must do a much better job at retail diplomacy in the Mideast, speaking to the ethnic and sectarian nations that make up its core, and not only to the nation-states that try to keep a cork on all the bubbling conflict inherent in poorly drawn borders. 

Comments?  Questions?    

America: Its Own Worst Enemy

By Arno J. Mayer

June 18, 2013 | Counterpunch

URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/18/america-its-own-worst-enemy/

Vanden Heuvel: Afghanistan, Iraq...Syria?

Vanden Heuvel draws the parallels between Syria and Afghanistan-Iraq:

The lessons of those previous wars are particularly relevant here. Syria has, as Syria specialist Joshua Landis has argued, many parallels to Iraq. It is a nation rife with religious, sectarian and class divisions. A minority — Shiite in Syria — in alliance with urban Sunnis, Christians and other minorities, has used a dictatorship to rule over the Sunni majority. The uprising has quickly turned sectarian — in part because of the outside influences of Turkey and the Gulf monarchies who seek to weaken the Iranian-Shiite alliance.

Despite U.S. efforts to cobble together a united and more secular opposition, the rebels are divided, with Islamists — many espousing open allegiance to al-Qaeda — providing the fiercest fighters. The violence will not end when the brutal regime falls. Already chaos, criminality, local militias and warlords beset “liberated”areas.

There is also that pesky consideration, international law:

Nor does the United States have any legal basis for waging war on Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad does not pose a terrorist or national security threat to the United States, nor a threat to international security. There is no United Nations resolution that can be stretched to provide even a transparent cover for intervention, as there was in Libya.

Finally, let's remember "taking out the bad guy" is the easy part:

The last thing the president should do is commit the United States militarily to the overthrow of the regime. As in Iraq, we can win that war, but we will surely lose in its violent aftermath — and we will bear responsibility for deepening the humanitarian disaster with our “humanitarian” intervention.

Diplomacy is better than military action in Syria

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

May 7, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/10m5WRx

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

What really motivated Boston bombers?

No comment. Just read it!

What Motivated the Boston Bombers

By Gary Leupp

April 25, 2013 | CounterPunch

URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/25/what-motivated-the-boston-bombers/

How fast we forget 'lessons learned' in Iraq!

Now here we have the "liberal" Washington Post's foreign affairs commentator Richard Cohen repeating his past mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq -- mistakes he admitted to and regretted on the 10th anniversary of 9/11!

Once again he is urging the U.S. to get involved in a Middle Eastern war.  (The original title of his op-ed was, "Deadly delay on Syria.")

What skin does the U.S. have in this game?  Why should we take sides in a civil war, when the eventual victors, whoever they may be, are going to be pretty unsavory and undemocratic by our standards?  Haven't we learned anything?

Conservative MSM haters, take note, this is the real media bias when it comes to U.S. foreign policy: only "fools" talk about peace and non-interference, while the "realists" and grownups in Washington talk about how fast we can get our hands bloody.

UPDATE (03.21.2013):  Here's a look at the unsavory characters whom we'd be arming in Syria, if John McCain, et al, got their way.

Does Obama have a plan for Syria?

By Richard Cohen

March 19, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/WzSJWS

Buchanan: Blowback from Russia

Blowback From Moscow

By Patrick J. Buchanan

November 30, 2007 | Human Events

Our next president will likely face a Russia led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, determined to stand up to a West that Russians believe played them for fools when they sought to be friends.

Americans who think Putin has never been anything but a KGB thug will reject accusations of any U.S. role in causing the ruination of relations between us.

Yet the hubris of Bill Clinton and George Bush I, and the Russophobia of those they brought with them into power, has been a primary cause of the ruptured relationship. And the folly of what they did is evident today, as Putin's party, United Russia, rolls to triumph on a torrent of abuse and invective against the West.

Entering the campaign's final week, Putin, addressing a rally of 5,000, ripped the Other Russia coalition led by chess champion Gary Kasparov as poodles of the United States, "who sponge off foreign embassies ... and who count on the support of foreign resources and governments, and not of their own people."

"Those who oppose us," roared Putin, "don't want our plans to be completed. They have completely different tasks and a completely different view of Russia. They need a weak, sick state, a disoriented, divided society, so that behind its back they can get up to their dirty deeds and profit at your and my expense."

Putin is referring to the time of the "oligarchs" of the Yeltsin era, who looted Russia when its state assets were sold off at fire-sale prices.

Putin is also accusing his opponents of attempting to use the Western-devised tactics of mass street protests to bring down his government. "Now that they have learned some things from Western specialists and tried them in the neighboring republics, they are going to try them on our streets."

Putin is talking here about the "color-coded" revolutions that the U.S. and NATO embassies, the National Endowment for Democracy, and allied foundations and front groups engineered in Ukraine and Georgia. Governments tilting toward Moscow were dumped over and pro-Western regimes installed -- to bid for membership in NATO and the European Union.

Blowback is a term broadly used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. The revolution that brought the Ayatollah to power is said to be blowback for the U.S.-engineered coup to overthrow Mossadegh in 1953 and install the Shah.

The nationalism and anti-Americanism rife in Putin's Russia is blowback for our contemptuous disregard of Russian sensibilities and our arrogant intrusions into Russia's space. How did we lose a Russia that Ronald Reagan and Bush I had virtually converted into an ally?

We pushed NATO into Moscow's face, bringing six ex-Warsaw Pact nations and three ex-Soviet republics -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- into our Cold War alliance and plotted to bring in Ukraine and Georgia.

We financed a pipeline from Baku through Georgia to the Black Sea to cut Russia out of the Caspian oil trade. After getting Moscow's permission to use old Soviet bases in Central Asia to invade Afghanistan, we set about making the bases permanent. We pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty over Moscow's objection, then announced plans to plant ABM radars in the Czech Republic and anti-missile missiles in Poland.

Putin has now responded in kind, and who can blame him?

As we tried to cut him out of the Azerbaijan oil with a Black Sea pipeline, he is slashing subsidies on Ukraine's oil and colluding with Germany on a Baltic Sea pipeline to cut Poland out of the oil trade with Western Europe.

As we moved our alliance and bases into his front and back yard, he has entered a quasi-alliance with China and four nations of Central Asia to expel U.S. military power from the region.

As we abandoned the ABM Treaty, the Duma, in November, voted 418 to 0 to suspend participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which restricts the size of the Russian army west of the Urals.

If we recognize Kosovo as independent, at the expense of Serbia, Putin is now threatening to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the breakaway republics of Georgia and Transneistria, claimed by Moldova.

Where we backed the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, Russia backs its favorites in Kiev and supports street protests in Tbilisi against the pro-American regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, whom the United States now seems powerless to help.

It was not NATO that liberated Eastern Europe. Moscow did -- by pulling out the Red Army after half a century. Why, then, did we think moving NATO into Eastern Europe was a surer guarantee of their continued independence than the goodwill of Russia? Many among our foreign policy elite now talk of a Second Cold War. John McCain wants Russia kicked out of the G-8.

But do we not have enough enemies already that we should add the largest nation on earth?