Category Archives: The War on Terror

Israel’s Big Bully Brother

When I refer to the U.S. as being Israel’s big bully brother, I am not just being sarcastic.  The actual territory of Palestine is of practically zero strategic important to U.S. national security.  While, its true that Israel has a powerful military for a country that diminutive, their involvement in any U.S. military undertaking would pose more a of liability than a benefit as was clearly the case when we begged them to stay out of Operation Dessert Storm even though they were targeted by Iraqi scud missiles.

Make no mistake.  Israel is a protectorate of the U.S. solely due to their lobbying and powerful capacity to influence U.S. elections and media outlets.

Gean Healy makes some interesting observations regarding the recent confirmation hearing for Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, using a priority list assembled by Buzzfeed.com from the transcripts.  For example, he notes that China was mentioned only 5 times, but…

The “special relationship” with Israel — embraced by everyone at the hearing including the nominee — was special enough to win Israel 166 references in the transcript, more than any other country. Is Israel really 33 times as important to the U.S. as an emerging superpower with 19 percent of the world’s population?

Remember the panic after the Citizens United decision that China would try to influence American elections?  China doesn’t hold a candle to Israel in that regard, and probably never will.

And Radley Balko, commenting on Healy’s article, notes the following in today’s Morning Links:

Number of times the word Isarel was used during the Chuck Hagel hearings: 166. Number of times the word drone was used: Zero.

Remember, these hearings are about whether the nominee is qualified to be Secretary of Defense, so it seems more than a little odd that the fastest growing means of projecting American military power over the middle east doesn’t even warrant a single mention.

“Drones over Timbuktu” sounds like a snarky reductio ad absurdum of terror-war mission creep, but it’s fast becoming our policy, and with little or no debate. Indeed, the committee seemed less interested in the wars we’re currently fighting than in making sure we don’t miss any opportunities to fight new ones. Afghanistan got 20 mentions in the hearing; “Iran” got 144, with most members demanding Hagel reaffirm that bombing Iran is an option we have to keep “on the table.”

Morning LInks

  • No more Saturday mail delivery. which is expected to save about $2 billion annually (equal to about an eighth of its annual losses).  The postal workers union is condemning the move, which is probably the best indicator that it’s a step in the right direction.  Interestingly, this decision is being made by the USPS without Congressional approval (like so much of what happens in the Executive Branch these days).
  • Media outlets are reporting on a secret CIA drone base in Saudi Arabia from which drone attacks in Yemen are launch.  While the American media has known about this base for some time, they withheld reporting on it at the government’s request because “the goddamn American people have no business knowing what their government is doing in their name.”  [That last comment is really more of a paraphrasing of American governmental attitude than a specific quote]
  • 18 y/o girl gets 30 days in the slammer for flipping off the judge.  This is right after the judge doubled her bond because of her lack of contrition.  The girl was charged with possession of the prescription drug Xanax.  Most media hasn’t even batted an eyelash at the harshness of the 30-day penalty. While it might not have been in her best interest to piss off the judge, like her, I have no respect for a justice system that would charge and prosecute someone for possession of Xanax to begin with.
  • A new report says the that the Britain’s MI5  wants to install black boxes on UK networks to enable them to monitor virtually everything their citizens say and do online.  While there is some speculation that encryption would render such a system useless, the part of the report that deals with that issue was redacted because, as is the case in any modern democracy, the government can’t have the population knowing what they plan to do.

Afternoon links

  • Greenwald dissects the Obama administration’s latest rationalization for its power to act as judge, jury, and executioner of any American citizen it deems to maybe possibly pose an imminent threat to some U.S. interest somewhere, sometime, with absolutely no oversight or checks and balances by the other two branches of government (which probably suits those other two branches just fine).  Reason.com also weighs in.
  • Argentina still thinks they’re going to get the Falkland Islands back.  I think they’re right.  I expect it to happen about the same time as Israel reverts back to Palestine.  Both cases represent instabilities maintained by force of arms that will eventually be unsustainable.

Ron Paul says Mali may be the next target for U.S. military

We’ve been helping the French, first with cargo transport, then refueling war planes, and soon we’ll have a drone base in the area.  But, as RT quotes Paul…

France “doesn’t have the military resources to sustain its fight against Mali’s jihadists without help from the US military. For now, that amounts to the use of giant transport planes to ferry French troops into Mali, and planes to refuel French combat aircrafts that are pummeling the militants’ positions,” writes USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham. “But that might now be enough. As recent events have shown, Northern Africa has become an expanding battleground for jihadist groups with links to al-Qaeda.”

Actually, France has a long history of military incapability that ultimately draws on other western powers for rescue.

The whole video is here:

CISPA back in the news

From RT:

In an attempt to scare the public with a looming cyber attack on US infrastructure, US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is once again pushing Congress to pass legislation allowing the government to have greater control over the Internet.

The use of fear-mongering as a tactic to convince people to allow the government to have more power is so common that it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow these days.  Despite the government’s history of cover-ups and intentionally deceptive propaganda, people still listen to them as if they actually still possess a shred of credibility.  But…

Privacy advocates had expressed concern that the US government would be able to read Americans’ personal e-mails, online chat conversations, and other personal information that only private companies and servers might have access to. The head of the National Security Agency promised it wouldn’t abuse its power, but critics have remained skeptical.

Yeah, me too.  In fact, skeptical is too kind a word.  The internet is the biggest threat to government ever conceived because it actually provides a means for an entire population to rise up in rebellion in a matter of hours.  This is more than a little terrifying to everyone with a vested interest in the status quo (which includes everyone with power and almost everyone with a lot of money).  Initially their attempts to gain control over the internet were dressed up in the cause of fighting child pornography, but after that failed to bear fruit, they decided to use anti-piracy and anti-terror crusades to justify the power grab.

And what about this little clip from reuters:

She urged Congress to pass legislation governing cyber security so the government could share information with the private sector to prevent an attack on infrastructure, much of which is privately owned.

Since when does government need Congressional approval to share information with the private sector?    Because they sure as hell don’t need it when they intentionally leak classified information that makes the government look good…

Obama on gun control

“…if there is a step we can take that will save even one child from what happened in Newtown, we should take that step…”

–Barack Obama, Jan. 14, 2013–.

Whenever someone claims that “saving even one child” justifies some legislation, you can be certain that you are about to become less free.  And, because this happens so frequently,  the child that is supposedly being saved, is going to grow up in a world much different from the one you enjoyed as a child.

Claims like this are intentionally designed to elicit an emotional reaction that trumps rational deliberation.   Not only does it work, but the public never seems to tire of it or see through the manipulation, which is why it is almost always used to justify bad legislation.  It’s has the effect of making people instantly stupid.

According to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, U.S. drone attacks have killed at least 204 children in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia over the last seven years.

You want to save some children, Mr President?  How about you clean your own house before laying the blame at the feet of the American public.  Stop your drone strikes. Don’t do it to save a bunch of Pakistani and Yemeni children.  We already know you don’t give a shit about them.  Do it to save American children who are likely to be the victims of the next 9/11-style attack that will inevitably come if we keep making enemies of the entire Muslim world by continuously and callously killing their children.

Obama selectively invokes MLK

An interesting observation by Glenn Greenwald:

Obama’s policies are a manifestation of exactly the militaristic mindset which King so eloquently denounced. Obama has always been fond of invoking King’s phrase “fierce urgency of now”, yet ironically, that is lifted from this anti-war speech, one that stands as a stinging repudiation of the continuous killing and violence Obama has spent the last four years unleashing on many countries around the world (Max Blumenthal suggested that Obama’s second inaugural speech be entitled “I have a drone”).

Ah, the irony.   After a warmongering President receives the Nobel Peace Prize, it should come as no surprise when he then uses the anti-war rhetoric of Martin Luther King to advance a conflicting agenda.

Opposition to America’s policy of routinely delivering liberation, peace, and security in the form of an air-launched missile will be a repeated theme on this website.  War is a tool of the state and, except in the case of popular rebellion, always benefits the government at the expense of the citizens.  The obviousness of this fact can only be suppressed by invoking mindless patriotism (usually on the part of the right) or the equally ignorant claim that the U.S. is bombing them for their own good, often referred to as a “humanitarian action” (a justification used by Bush and repeatedly by Obama).

[Update]

Greenwald posted another column today that points out another outrageous misuse of MLK, this time to promote the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command.

The US military – which is currently bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen at least, all in secret – just exploited one of the 20th Century’s greatest proponents of nonviolence and most vehement opponents of US militarism as a public face for its aggression and violence in the world.

America’s schizophrenic (two-faced) foreign policy

Glenn Greenwald writes about the conflict between the U.S. government’s claim to be on the side of freedom and democracy even as it enthusiastically supports the worlds worst despots.

Greenwald describes how clearly this point is made in a recent memo to Obama from former CIA officer and adviser to four presidents, Bruce Riedel.

Riedel stridently argues that the US must remain steadfastly opposed to any democratic revolutions in the region. That’s because Saudi Arabia is “America’s oldest ally in the Middle East, a partnership that dates back to 1945.” Thus, “since American interests are so intimately tied to the House of Saud, the US does not have the choice of distancing the United States from it in an effort to get on the right side of history.”

Riedel is not exactly a principled advocate of peace, being an enthusiastic supporter of starting a war with Iran, the only beneficiary of which would be Israel.

In 2012, Riedel contributed to a book on Iran by Brookings “scholars” which argued that the US could launch a war against Iran by covertly provoking its government into responses that could then falsely be depicted by the US to the world “as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression” – exactly what Brookings’ Ken Pollack proposed be done in 2002 to deceitfully justify the attack on Iraq.

It’s not hard to see that the U.S. sanctions against Iran, which would easily be considered an act of war if the situation were reversed, fit into that strategy and are remarkably similar to the initiation of war with Iraq.  There can be no doubt that the U.S. has been trying to coax Iran into a response that will justify military action.  So far, Iran hasn’t taken the bait, even though Israel has been chomping at the bit to attack Iran.

American politicians and their PR branch, commonly known as the mainstream press, spew forth all manner of rhetoric about humanitarian motives, but Greenwald points out that their actions say otherwise.

Just listen to the patently deceitful rhetoric that spews forth from US political leaders and their servants in the Foreign Policy Community when it comes time to rail against anti-US regimes in Libya, Syria and Iran. That the US and its Nato allies – eager benefactors of the world’s worst tyrants – are opposed to those regimes out of concern for democracy and human rights is a pretense, a conceit, so glaring and obvious that it really defies belief that people are willing to advocate it in public with a straight face.

The fact is that the U.S. government must maintain allies in the Arab countries if it is going to fulfill its commitment to AIPAC to protect Israel.  As Israel continues to occupy and expand further into Palestinian territory, the U.S. must sacrifice it’s integrity to maintain “friendships” with the few Arab countries that can be bought off with favors and advanced military technology.  Our continued support for these dictators is very likely to come back in the form of further terrorist attacks on U.S. property and citizens.

Greenwald sums it up this way:

The fact that one can have a memo like Riedel’s so clearly explaining US policy to support the worst tyrannies that serve its interests, sitting right next to endless US pro-war rhetoric about the urgency of fighting for freedom and democracy, is an outstanding testament to that myth-making.

 

The war on terror has become the new normal

As Glenn Greenwald points out:

In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.

Does that sound to you like a government anticipating the end of the War on Terror any time soon? Or does it sound like one working feverishly to make their terrorism-justified powers of detention, surveillance, killing and secrecy permanent?

There are two major parties in the U.S.  No, not republicans and democrats.  The country is divided between the rulers and the ruled.  Government will always seek more power.  It’s the nature of the beast.  And there is no better way to gain power than to declare a perpetual state of war.  The rationale is that the government needs these new powers because the country is under some  extraordinary threat.  The war on poverty, the war on crime, the war on drugs, and the war on terror have all served a singular purpose and that is to expand governmental power.  And, in that regard, every one of those wars has been a roaring success.  Unfortunately, giving power to the government is almost always bloodless.  Getting it back rarely is.

If you don’t follow Glenn Greenwald, you probably should.  That goes double if you’re one of those party loyalists who think government would be so much better if only it were completely controlled by the republicans or democrats.

Having to choose between republicans or democrats is very similar to having to choose which one of your nuts to hit as hard as you can with a hammer.  There is no “lesser of two evils” in that choice.