The Joys of Airstrikes and Anonymity December 30, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, Afghanistan, roger hollander, terrorism, al-Qaeda, civilian casualties, war, pakistan, islam, collateral damage, terrorist, muslim, Media, sudan, journalism, glenn greenwald, media ethics, corporate media, drone missiles, air strikes, muslim world, yemen, yemen strike, Qaaim al-Raymi, predator missile
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Each time the U.S. bombs a new location in the Muslim world, the same pattern emerges. First, officials from the U.S. or allied governments run to their favorite media outlet to claim — anonymously — that some big, bad, notorious, “top” Al Qaeda leader “may have been” or “likely was” killed in the strike, and this constitutes a “stinging” or ”devastating” blow against the Terrorist group. These compliant media outlets then sensationalistically trumpet that claim as the dominant theme of their ”reporting” on the attack, drowning out every other issue.
As a result, and by design, there is never any debate or discussion over the propriety or wisdom of these strikes. After all, what sane, rational, Serious person would possibly question a bombing raid or missile strike that ”likely” killed a murderous, top Al Qaeda fighter and struck a “devastating blow” to that group’s operationg abilities? Having the story shaped this way also ensures that there is virtually no attention paid to the resulting civilian casualties (i.e., the slaughter of innocent people); most Americans, especially journalists, have been trained to ignore such deaths as nothing more than justifiable “collateral damage,” especially when a murderous, top Al Qaeda fighter was killed by the bombs (besides, as Alan Dershowitz once explained, “civilians” in close enough proximity to a Top Terrorist themselves may very well bear some degree of culpability). The adolescent We-Got-the-Bad-Guy! headline also ensures there is no attention paid to the radicalizing effect of these civilian deaths and our attacks for that country and in the region.
Yet over and over and over, it turns out that these anonymous government assertions — trumpeted by our mindless media — are completely false. The Big Bad Guy allegedly killed in the strike ends up nowhere near the bombs and missiles. Sometimes, the very same Big Bad Guy can be used to justify different strikes over the course of many years (we know we said we killed him four times before, but this time we’re pretty sure we got him), or he can turn up alive when it’s time to re-trumpet the Al Qaeda threat (we said before we killed him in that devastating airstrike, but actually he’s alive and more dangerous than ever!!). Just like the “we killed 30 extremists“ claim or the “we got Al Qaeda’s Number 3″ boast, this is propaganda in its purest form, disseminated jointly by the U.S. Government and American media, and it happens over and over, compelling a rational person to conclude that it’s clearly intentional by both parties.
In the last week alone, this pattern just asserted itself — twice — with regard to the air strikes in Yemen. The first set of strikes, it was immediately leaked, was allegedly aimed at “the presumed leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Qaaim al-Raymi,” yet it turned out he was not among the dozens of people killed, though “U.S. officials believe one of his top deputies [unnamed] may have been killed.” Then, after a second set of strikes on Thursday, it was claimed that “a Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch,” and an American Muslim preacher linked to Nidal Hasan, “the man who shot dead 13 people at a U.S. army base [Anwar al-Awlaki] may also have died.”
But while ABC News had identified “the presumed leader of al Qaeda in Yemen” as “Qaaim al-Raymi” when he was the target of last week’s strikes, Reuters decided that the “top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch” were completely different people — “Nasser al-Wahayshi, the Yemeni leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and his Saudi deputy, Saeed al-Shehri” — and then excitedly announced that they “may have been killed” by this week’s air strikes. Whoever we claim we kill is the “key leader of Al Qaeda’s operations”– and it can change from day to day. And now, it turns out, the “radical cleric” who reportedly spoke at length with the accused Fort Hood shooter and thus packs the most emotional punch for Americans is not dead at all, but “is alive and well following reports he may have been killed in a Yemeni airstrike against suspected al-Qaida hideouts.”
Just watch how this obvious propaganda tactic works again and again:
Last week’s Yemen strike – ABC News, December 18, 2009:
The presumed leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Qaaim al-Raymi, has frequently appeared on internet videos, . . . Qaaim al-Raymi was considered a prime target of the attack Thursday but was reported to have escaped the attack. However, U.S. officials believe one of his top deputies may have been killed.
This week’s air strikes in Yemen, Reuters, December 24, 2009:
A Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch on Thursday, and an American Muslim preacher linked to the man who shot dead 13 people at a U.S. army base may also have died, a Yemeni security official said. Nasser al-Wahayshi, the Yemeni leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and his Saudi deputy, Saeed al-Shehri, were believed to be among more than 30 militants killed in the dawn operation in the eastern province of Shabwa, said the official, who asked not to be identified.
U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki may also have died in the air strike which targeted a meeting of militants planning attacks on Yemeni and foreign oil and economic targets, he said. If all the deaths are confirmed, the air strike would appear to have struck a severe blow against AQAP, seen as the most dangerous regional offshoot of Osama bin Laden’s network.
False – Associated Press, December 25, 2009:
A U.S.-born radical cleric is alive and well following reports he may have been killed in a Yemeni airstrike against suspected al-Qaida hideouts . . .
In addition to al-Awlaki, the top leader of al-Qaida’s branch in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Naser Abdel-Karim al-Wahishi, and his deputy Saeed al-Shihri were also believed to be at the meeting, Yemen’s Supreme Security Committee said. But Yemeni officials still have no access to the area, which is controlled by armed gunmen and supporters of al-Qaida, and could not confirm for certain who was killed in the attack.
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CNN – January, 2006 U.S. airstrike in Pakistan:
Ayman al-Zawahiri — Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in the al Qaeda terrorist network — was the target of a CIA airstrike Friday in a remote Pakistani village and may have been among those killed, knowledgeable U.S. sources told CNN. . . . the sources said there was intelligence suggesting he was in one of the buildings hit during the strike.
False – Fox News, January 31, 2006 – “Zawahiri, in New Videotape, Says He Survived Airstrike“:
Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a videotape aired Monday that President Bush was a “butcher” and a “failure” because of a deadly U.S. airstrike in Pakistan targeting the bin Laden deputy, and he threatened a new attack on the United States. A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity in compliance with office policy, said there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the tape.
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CBS News, July, 2008 U.S. airstrike in Pakistan:
Ayman al-Zawahiri – the second most powerful leader in al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden’s No. 2 – may be critically wounded and possibly dead, CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reports exclusively. . . . CBS News has obtained a copy of an intercepted letter from sources in Pakistan, which urgently requests a doctor to treat al-Zawahiri. . . . The letter is dated July 29 – one day after a U.S. air strike that killed al Qaeda weapons expert Abu Khabab al-Masri, and five other Arabs in South Waziristan. . . . a counter-intelligence expert and other U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News that the U.S. is looking into reports that al-Zawahiri is dead.
Al Qaeda’s No. 2 thug has “emerged” as its operational leader after seven years on the run with the same $25 million bounty on his head as Osama Bin Laden. Despite years of Bush administration claims that Ayman al-Zawahiri – an Egyptian doctor turned Bin Laden deputy – was on the lam with his boss and unable to exert control, the opposite is now true, a State Department report said Thursday. . . .”Although Bin Laden remains the group’s ideological figurehead, Zawahiri has emerged as Al Qaeda’s strategic and operational planner,” the report added.
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January, 2006 missile strike in Pakistan, New York Times:
Two senior members of Al Qaeda and the son-in-law of its No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were among those killed in the American airstrikes in remote northeastern Pakistan last week, two Pakistani officials said here on Wednesday. . . .If any or all were indeed killed, it would be a stinging blow to Al Qaeda’s operations, said the American officials, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized by their agencies to speak for attribution. . . . The airstrikes, which killed 18 civilians, among them women and children, have caused anger across the country . . . At least one of the men believed by the Pakistani officials to have been killed, an Egyptian known here as Abu Khabab al-Masri, is on the United States’ most-wanted list with a $5 million reward for help in his capture. His real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, 52, who according to the United States government Web site rewardsforjustice.net, was an expert in explosives and poisons. . . . The target of the raid, American officials have said, was Al Qaeda’s No. 2, Mr. Zawahiri, but they have acknowledged that he was not killed in the attack and Pakistani officials say that Mr. Zawahiri failed to show up for the dinner that night.
January, 2006 missile strike in Pakistan, ABC News:
ABC News has learned that Pakistani officials now believe that al Qaeda’s master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert was one of the men killed in last week’s U.S. missile attack in eastern Pakistan. Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was identified by Pakistani authorities as one of four known major al Qaeda leaders present at an apparent terror summit in the village of Damadola early last Friday morning.
False – LA Times, February 3, 2008:
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials now believe that the Egyptian, Abu Khabab Masri, is alive and well — and in charge of resurrecting Al Qaeda’s program to develop or obtain weapons of mass destruction.
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January, 2006 airstrike in Pakistan, New York Times:
Another Egyptian, known by the alias Abu Ubayda al-Misri, was also believed killed, the Pakistani officials said. He was the chief of insurgent operations in the southern Afghan province of Kunar, which borders Bajaur in Pakistan, the area where the airstrikes occurred, according to one of the Pakistani officials.
False – Fox News, April 9, 2008:
Abu Ubaida al-Masri, one of Al Qaeda’s top operatives and the mastermind behind a plot to use liquid explosives to blow British passenger jets out of the sky, is dead, a U.S. official confirmed to FOX News Wednesday. The unidentified official said it is believed that al-Masri died of natural causes, possibly hepatitis, in Pakistan, and are staying away from a report that he was killed in a January CIA predator strike.
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Months of attacks by unmanned US predator aircraft have caused carnage among the middle ranks of terrorist leaders in the lawless lands along the border with Afghanistan . . . Their victims have included experienced Arab leaders and, it is now thought, Adam Gadahn, a former heavy-metal fan and so-called “killer computer nerd” originally from California. Nothing has been heard from him for months, leading intelligence experts to conclude that he may be dead.
False — LA Times, June 14, 2009:
Adam Gadahn, a Southern California-raised man self-described as American Al Qaeda has released a new video in which he talks about his Jewish ancestry.
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July, 2009 airstrike in Pakistan, Fox News:
U.S. officials believe Usama bin Laden’s son, Saad bin Laden, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan. Sources confirmed to FOX News late Wednesday that officials believe the younger bin Laden was killed by hellfire missiles from a U.S. Predator drone strike earlier this year.
Highly questionable – Middle East News:
A close friend of Osama bin Laden told Al Arabiya that he thought the al-Qaeda mastermind’s son was probably still alive casting doubt on reports by American media that he was killed in Pakistan. Yemeni national Rashad Saied, who stayed with bin Laden in Afghanistan before the September 11, 2001 attacks, said there is no proof to U.S. media reports last week that Saad bin Laden was killed in an American airstrike on Pakistan earlier this year. “If Saad had been killed, al-Qaeda would have announced that,” Saied told Al Arabiya. “They announced the death of many key figures in the organization before. It is considered a source of pride for them.”
New York Times, December 23, 2009:
A teenage daughter of Osama bin Laden, who has lived with at least five of her siblings in a guarded compound in Iran since 2001, took refuge last month in the Saudi Embassy in Tehran . . . The status of another son, Saad, remained uncertain. American officials said last summer that they believed that Saad bin Laden had traveled from Iran to Pakistan and had been killed by an American missile fired from a drone. Omar and Zaina bin Laden said Saad was still in the Tehran compound when the missile attack was said to have occurred, but they said that they did not know where he was now or whether he was still alive.
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I could literally spend the rest of the day chronicling events very similar to these. A few caveats are in order. It’s not surprising that facts are sometimes difficult to obtain in the immediate aftermath of a strike, particularly in remote areas such as Western Pakistan and Yemen. Sometimes, these air strikes do actually result in the death of the specific targets alleged to lead various Islamic radical groups.
But far more often, these boasting claims regarding a controversial U.S. air attack or missile strike turn out to be completely false. It’s painfully obvious that these assertions are made to overwhelm, distort and suppress any discussions of the actual effects of the attack — who the strike really killed, whether it was justified, legal or wise, whether we should continue to drop bombs in more and more Muslim countries. Yet no matter how many times these claims prove to be false, American media outlets not only dutifully and mindlessly print them without challenge or skepticism, but also allow these claims to dictate their headlines and the overwhelming focus of their “reporting” on the attacks (U.S. Air Strike Said to Kill Top Al Qaeda Leaders). As a result, Americans are innundated with false claims about things that never actually happened — pure myths and falsehoods — while the actual consequences of our actions (the corpses of innocent Muslim men, women and children being pulled from the rubble) are widely disseminated in the Muslim world, yet are barely mentioned by our media. And then we walk around, confounded and confused, about how there could be such a grave disparity in perception among our rational, free and well-informed selves versus those irrational, mislead, paranoid, and primitive Muslims.
Because it’s all done under the corrupt cover of anonymity, there’s never any accountability (reporters will simply say that they printed this because their government sources whispered it in their ears — so what choice did they have? — and they’ll keep the government officials’ identity concealed to ensure they can never be questioned). The whole process is blatantly designed not to convey what happened, but to obscure what happened and to prevent any discussion of its consequences.
Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.
Cause and Effect in the ‘Terror War’ December 29, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan, afghanistan surge, afghanistan troops, Afghanistan War, al-Qaeda, cia drone, civilian casualties, drone missiles, glenn greenwald, muslim, muslim civilians, muslim countries, obama administration, pakistan, pakistan bombing, roger hollander, somalia, terror war, terrorism, terrorist attack, war on terrorism, yemen, yemen bombing, yemeni extremists, yemeni government
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“In all their alleged allegedness, this Administration has an allergy to the concept of war, and thus to the tools of war, including strategy and war aims” — Supreme Tough Guy Warrior Mark Steyn, National Review, yesterday.
“The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan” – New York Times, December 4, 2009.
“In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen” — New York Times, yesterday.
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Actually, if you count our occupation of Iraq, our twice-escalated war in Afghanistan, our rapidly escalating bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and various forms of covert war involvement in Somalia, one could reasonably say that we’re fighting five different wars in Muslim countries — or, to use the NYT’s jargon, “five fronts” in the “Terror War” (Obama yesterday specifically mentioned Somalia and Yemen as places where, euphemistically, “we will continue to use every element of our national power”). Add to those five fronts the “crippling” sanctions on Iran many Democratic Party luminaries are now advocating, combined with the chest-besting threats from our Middle East client state that the next wars they fight against Muslims will be even “harsher” than the prior ones, and it’s almost easier to count the Muslim countries we’re not attacking or threatning than to count the ones we are. Yet this still isn’t enough for America’s right-wing super-warriors, who accuse the five-front-war-President of “an allergy to the concept of war.”
In the wake of the latest failed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines, one can smell the excitement in the air — that all-too-familiar, giddy, bipartisan climate that emerges in American media discourse whenever there’s a new country we get to learn about so that we can explain why we’re morally and strategically justified in bombing it some more. “Yemen” is suddenly on every Serious Person’s lips. We spent the last month centrally involved to some secret degree in waging air attacks on that country — including some that resulted in numerous civilian deaths — but everyone now knows that this isn’t enough and it’s time to Get Really Serious and Do More.
For all the endless, exciting talk about the latest Terrorist attack, one issue is, as usual, conspicuously absent: motive. Why would a young Nigerian from a wealthy, well-connected family want to blow himself on one of our airplanes along with 300 innocent people, and why would Saudi and Yemeni extremists want to enable him to do so? When it comes to Terrorism, discussions of motive have been declared more or less taboo from the start because of the dishonest equation of motive discussions with justification — as though understanding the reasons why X happens is to posit that X is legitimate and justifiable. Causation simply is; it has nothing to do with issues of morality, blame, or justification. Yet all that is generally permitted to be said in such situations is that Terrorists try to harm us because they’re Evil, and we (of course) are not, and that’s generally the end of the discussion.
Despite that taboo, evidence always ends up emerging on this question. As numerous reports have indicated, the Al Qaeda group in the Arabian Peninsula has said that this attempted attack is in “retaliation” for the multiple, recent missile attacks on Yemen in which numerous innocent Muslim civilians were killed, as well as for the U.S.’s multi-faceted support for the not-exactly-democratic Yemeni government. That is similar to reports that Nidal Hasan was motivated to attack Fort Hood because “he was upset at the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.” And one finds this quote from an anonymous Yemeni official tacked on to the end of this week’s NYT article announcing the “widening terror war” in Yemen — as though it’s just an afterthought:
“The problem is that the involvement of the United States creates sympathy for Al Qaeda. The cooperation is necessary — but there is no doubt that it has an effect for the common man. He sympathizes with Al Qaeda.”
As always, the most confounding aspect of the reaction to the latest attempted terrorist episode is the professed confusion and self-righteous innocence that is universally expressed. Whether justified or not, we are constantly delivering death to the Muslim world. We do not see it very much, but they certainly do. Again, independent of justification, what do we think is going to happen if we continuously invade, occupy and bomb Muslim countries and arm and enable others to do so? Isn’t it obvious that our five-front actions are going to cause at least some Muslims — subjected to constant images of American troops in their world and dead Muslim civilians at our hands, even if unintended — to want to return the violence? Just look at the bloodthirsty sentiments unleashed among Americans even from a failed Terrorist attempt. What sentiments do we think we’re unleashing from a decade-long (and counting and increasing) multi-front “war” in the Muslim war?
There very well may be some small number of individuals who are so blinded by religious extremism that they will be devoted to random violence against civilians no matter what we do, but we are constantly maximizing the pool of recruits and sympathy among the population on which they depend. In other words, what we do constantly bolsters their efforts, and when we do, we always seem to move more in the direction of helping them even further. Ultimately, we should ask ourselves: if we drop more bombs on more Muslim countries, will there be fewer or more Muslims who want to blow up our airplanes and are willing to end their lives to do so? That question really answers itself.
Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.
Barack Obama and Langston Hughes on “Grumblers” and “Merry Christmas” December 27, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Africa, Asia, Barack Obama, Cuba, Economic Crisis, Haiti, History, Iraq and Afghanistan, Race, War.Tags: afghanista, Afghanistan War, Africa, africa climate, african american, Barack Obama, black america, black caucus, black leadership, black opinion, bruce dixon, christmas, christmas message, danny glover, Economic Crisis, gandhi, great depression, haiti, India, langston hughes, pakistan, roger hollander, Wall Street
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When US presidents offer us their holiday greeting messages, do we know what are they really saying? How hard can it be to figure that out? Langston Hughes died in 1967, but he knew what every US president, including Barack Obama is really saying, underneath and behind the mask.
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
In a recent interview with one of the few black reporters privileged to be part of the White House press corps, President Obama wasasked
April D. Ryan: Speaking of the African American community, this seems to be a shift in black leadership, as it relates to supporting you. You have the CBC that’s upset with you about targeting on the jobs front — African Americans, 15.6 percent unemployment rate, expected to go to 20 percent; mainstream America 10 percent. Then you have black actors who supported you — Danny Glover, who’s saying that you’ve not changed, your administration is the same as George W. Bush. What are your thoughts about the fact that black leadership is grumbling, and the fact that people are concerned with you being the first African American President, and they thought that there would be a little bit more compassion for black issues?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, April, I think you just engaged in a big generalization in terms of how you asked that question. If you want me to line up all the black actors, for example, who support me, and put them on one side of the room, and a couple who are grumbling on the other, I’m happy to have that.
I think if you look at the polling, in terms of the attitudes of the African American community, there’s overwhelming support for what we’ve tried to do. And, so, is there grumbling? Of course there’s grumbling,
Obama was referring to the relatively mild and tentative criticisms of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with other expressions of disappointment on the part of such activists as actor Danny Glover. The president can ignore, dismiss or disparage the divide between his policies and the opinions of the African American community which supported him. But it’s deep, it’s real, and it’s growing. It’s even historic.
Presidents have been issuing holiday greeting messages from their homes or cozy offices for a long time now, and Obama’s will be on line any minute now. Those interested can probably find it at JackandJillPolitics.com, at whitehouse.gov, and any number of other places. But the ironic 1930 Christmas message of Langston Hughes, the poet laureate of Black America sounds, with the most minor edits, like it could have come from the lips any US president of the past hundred years, including Barack Obama.
Sixty-nine years ago Langston Hughes began his holiday poem “Merry Christmas” with these lines
Merry Christmas China
From the gun-boats in the river
Ten inch shells for Christmas gifts
And peace on earth forever
At the moment, the U.S. was hip-deep in the Chinese civil war, bankrolling and advising a string of opium-soaked warlord armies against communists and agitators, and conducting naval operations in Chinese rivers and off its coasts. Today our first black president’s Pentagon, headed by the same team that ran George Bush’s Pentagon, sits atop some 800 overseas military bases in a hundred countries with more than 2 million uniformed personnel. Our president will spend more on this military machine than the all the rest of the planet combined, fighting and preparing to fight what the National Security Doctrine calls “multiple overlapping wars” to control resources in distant lands in the interest “free trade and free markets.”
Langston’s Christmas poem draws our attention to a part of the world much in today’s headlines.
Merry Christmas, India
To Gandhi in his cell
From righteous Christian England
Ring out bright Christmas bell
Under our first black president, Afghanistan and Pakistan are part of a vast law-free zone in which daily shellings and air raids go unreported and unremarked except by the families of victims. Assassinations and kidnappings to fill America’s world-wide network of secret prisons have replaced the open incarceration of real and suspected political foes. At least we knew Gandhi’s name, what he was charged with, where he was locked up, what his sentence was, whether he got a day in court and whether his keepers mistreated him. We can’t say that about hundreds or thousands of Obama’s prisoners.
Merry Christmas Africa
From Cairo to he Cape
Sing hallelujah, praise the Lord
For murder and for rape
Some things have changed very little indeed. The four part series “The Ravaging of Africa” to which a link appears in our left column, is a comprehensive indictment of US policy in Africa, which has caused the death of some 26 million Africans since the 1960s, including nearly ten million in Congo alone. America’s role as conscienceless predator was reaffirmed last week in Copenhagen, when the US categorically rejected the notion that it owed the rest of the world a debt for being the single major contributor to climate change over the last century and a half. Africans can drown or starve due to US -initiated climate change, but there will be no technology sharing, no reparations, nothing in the way of human solidarity between Africa and the West if the son of Africa in the White House has anything to say about it.
Langston Hughes draws our attention to the Caribbean, where the US has enforced its will at gunpoint for much of two centuries.
Ring Merry Christmas Haiti
And drown the voodoo drums
We’ll rob you to the Christmas hymns
Until the next Christ comes
Ring Merry Christmas Cuba
(Where Yankee domination
Keeps a nice fat president’s
in a little half-starved nation.)
In Cuba at least, Yankee domination is over. President Obama seems to resent this fact just as much as the last nine presidents, and continues to enforce a warlike economic blockade on Cuba.
And in Haiti, after more than a dozen US invasions and occupations, the US engineered the kidnapping of that country’s elected president, whom Obama will not even allow back in the Western hemisphere. In the name of international cooperation, the US pays for a multinational occupation force from Brazil and other countries to hunt down and kill members of Haiti’s Lavalas party, freeing US Marines for duty elsewhere.
Under the rules, Haiti is to be kept starving and terrorized, prevented by law from feeding or funding itself, owning its own infrastructure or employing its own people. Some things don’t change much.
The Christmas message of Langston Hughes doesn’t forget about domestic affairs either.
And to you down and outers
(“Due to economic laws”)
Oh, eat, drink, be merry
With a breadline Santa Claus–
Jobless levels are the highest they’ve been anywhere since the Great Depression, when Hughes penned his Christmas greeting. But now, just as in 1930, we have a president with an unshakable belief that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” a saying popularized by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. In this time of economic crisis, President Obama has transferred more wealth to Wall Street from the real economy than all his predecessors combined.
But hard-pressed homeowners and those with heavy debts due to unpayable medical bills remain underwater. Their bailout isn’t coming. The only ones, apart from Wall Street who’ll get anything under an Obama administration will be the military.
President Obama began this December with a belligerent address that used the cadets at West Point as human stage props. At mid-month he went to Copenhagen to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and offer another bald-faced set of excuses for wars, kidnappings, secret prisons and the whole panoply of empire. He or his vice president may end it treating us to a Christmas or New Year’s message posing with the troops in occupied Iraq or Afghanistan. The more some things change, the more they stay the same.
We don’t know exactly what Obama will say in his holiday message. But Langston Hughes knew seventy years ago what he will mean.
While all the world hails Christmas
While all the church bells sway
While better still the Christian guns
Proclaim this joyous day
While holy steel that makes us strong
Spits forth a mighty yuletide song
SHOOT Merry Christmas everywhere
Let Merry Christmas GAS the air.
Presidents can always find sycophants, yes-men or yes-women eager to agree to whatever they say, often before they can even say it. All that comes with the job, along with Air Force One and that song they play every time he enters a crowded room. But the the truth is always true, no matter how hotly or how many the deniers, and most of Black America is not in denial on war, peace, mass incarceration or poverty. The heroes, and the just plain honest will always be those who speak the truth to power.
Langston has been gone from us a long time now. We’ll never know what he might say to a son of Africa in the White House, married to a girl from the south side of Chicago. But nobody on either side of the grave speaks more directly to what our first black president has become than Langston Hughes did seven decades ago. Barack Obama is in power. He can ignore, disparage or dismiss the truth. But it’s still true. And most of us know it.
We wish the president and first family, along with all our readers and friends around the world a joyous and fulfilling holiday.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Atlanta. He can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport. Langston Hughes is the poet laureate of Black America and can be reached at public libraries, and at independent and other bookstores everywhere.
Why a Resister Chose Canada Over the War in Iraq December 24, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: army recruitment, Canada, canada refuge, harper government, Iraq, iraq abuse, iraq civilians, iraq racism, Iraq war, racism, rodney watson, roger hollander, stop-loss, war, war resister
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by Rodney Watson
I am from Kansas City, Kansas, and I joined the U.S. Army for financial reasons in 2004 after my steady job of seven years ended.
I enlisted for a three-year contract with the intention of being a cook and not in a combat role. I wanted to support the troops in some way without being involved in any combat operations.
A recruiter promised that I could do this.
In 2005 I was deployed to Iraq just north of Mosul where I was told that my duties as a cook would be to supervise and ensure that the local nationals in the dining facility were preparing meals according to military standards.
But instead of supervising in the dining facility, I was performing vehicle searches for explosives, contraband and weapons. I also operated a mobile X-ray machine that scanned vehicles and civilians for any possible explosives that could enter the base.
I had to keep the peace within an area that held 100 to 200 Iraqi civilian men who would be waiting for security clearances, and shoot warning shots at Iraqi children who were trying to set up mortars to fire at the base.
In Iraq I witnessed racism and physical abuse from soldiers toward the civilians.
On one occasion a soldier was beating an Iraqi civilian, called him a “sand nigger,” threw his Qur’an on the ground and spat on it. The civilian man was unarmed and was just looking for work on our base. He posed no type of threat and was beaten because soldiers brought their personal racist hatred to Iraq.
This was not what I had signed up for.
After all the wrongs I witnessed in Iraq, I decided that once my one-year tour of duty was over I would never again be part of this unnecessary war.
When I returned home, my unit was informed that we would be redeployed within four months. This would put me beyond the term I signed up for. I was going to be stop-lossed and forced to serve past my contract.
While on two-week leave I made my decision to come to Canada and not return to my base at Fort Hood, Texas.
I have been here in Vancouver since early 2007. I have been self-sufficient. I have fathered a beautiful son whose mother is Canadian. I plan to marry her and to provide our son with a loving and caring family unit.
I have made many friends and I have built a peaceful life here.
My son and my wife-to-be are my heart and soul and it would be a great tragedy for my family and for me personally if I were deported and torn away from them.
I think being punished as a prisoner of conscience for doing what I felt morally obligated to do is a great injustice.
This Christmas I hope and pray that people will open their hearts and minds to give peace and love a chance.
I appeal to the Canadian government to honour your country’s great traditions of being a place of refuge from militarism and a place that respects human rights by supporting my decision, and the decisions taken by my fellow resisters to refuse any further participation in this unjust war.
I ask that you urge your government to respect the will of the majority of Canadians by acting on the direction it has been given twice by Parliament to immediately stop deporting Iraq War resisters like me and to let us become permanent residents here.
My heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones in this unnecessary war.
Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know December 18, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: USAID, Afghanistan War, Afghanistan, roger hollander, war, Blackwater, surge, defense department, mercenaries, jeremy scahill, dod, privatization, private security, dyncorp, private contractors, obama administration, afghanistan troops, war cost, mccaskill
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Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.
by Jeremy Scahill
A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone-that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.
![[DynCorp instructor with police recruits in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, June 2008. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. (File image via TPM)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/soldiersit-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg "soldiersit-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg")
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”
At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.
Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”
A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”
The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:
In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects. According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects. USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.
The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.
As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
Kucinich Plans to Force Vote on US Withdrawal from Afghanistan December 15, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan, afghanistan surge, aghanistan war, congress, constitution, daniel tencer, Dennis Kucinich, Karzai, Robert Gates, roger hollander, surge, Taliban, war, war powers
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For Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s announcement Tuesday that his country would need the US’s military support for another 10 or 15 years seems to have been the last straw.
![[]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/denniskucinich20080710b.jpg "denniskucinich20080710b.jpg")
The outspoken House representative says it was Karzai’s statement that prompted him to draft a resolution calling for a House vote on the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“We shouldn’t be there another 15 to 20 months, let alone 15 to 20 years,” Kucinich told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “When I’m in my district talking to people, nobody has come up to me and said we need to be in Afghanistan for the next 15 to 20 years. They do say we need jobs, we need to protect our basic industry, we need education, we need to protect retirement security. I’d like to see us start taking care of things here at home.”
Kucinich is circulating a letter (PDF) among congressional colleagues asking them to co-sponsor his resolution.
My bills, which would trigger a timeline for a timely withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan, invoke the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and are intended to secure the Constitutional role of Congress, as directly elected representatives of the people, under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, to decide whether or not America enters into war, continues a war, or otherwise introduces armed forces or material into combat zones.
Despite the president’s assertion that previous congressional action gives him the authority to respond to the attacks of September 11, 2001, a careful reading of the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) makes cleat that the AUMF did not supersede “any requirement of the War Powers Resolution” and therefore did not undermine Congress’ ability to revisit the constitutional question of war powers at a later date.
“We cannot afford these wars. We cannot afford the loss of lives. We cannot afford the cost to taxpayers. We cannot afford to fail to exercise our constitutional right to end the wars,” Kucinich said in a statement circulated among reporters on Wednesday.
Kucinich told the Plain Dealer he expects his resolution to land at the House International Relations Committee early next year. If the resolution is voted down, he will ask to have it moved back to the floor of the House — a maneuver that earlier this year allowed him to debate the impeachment of former Vice President Dick Cheney on the House floor, the Plain Dealer notes.
During a visit by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Kabul on Tuesday, President Karzai told the Pentagon chief that Afghanistan would need the US’s help in security matters for 10 or 15 years going forward. President Obama’s plan to start withdrawing troops in July 2011 has sparked concern in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan that the Taliban could sit out the surge and attack a pared down force in 18 months’ time.
“For 15 to 20 years, Afghanistan will not be able to sustain a force of that nature and capability with its own resources,” Karzai told a news conference. “We hope that the international community and the United States, as our first ally, will help Afghanistan reach the ability to sustain a force.”
– With Agence France-Presse
© 2009 Raw Story
Ottawa won’t release Afghan documents December 14, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Iraq and Afghanistan, Torture.Tags: afghan mission, afghan prisoners, Afghanistan, afghanistan prisoners, Afghanistan War, Canada, canada government, canada parliament, censorship, house of commons, human rights, les whitington, Michael Ignatieff, national security, prisoner abuse, richard colvin, roger hollander, Stephen Harper, torture, War Crimes
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(Roger’s Note: Stepen Harper, George W. Bush, Barak Obama: speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil)
Toronto Star, December 11, 2009
Harper government says it will not comply with Opposition motion passed by Parliament, setting stage for legal battle
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government appears unwilling to hand over documents as ordered in a vote last night in the Commons, setting the stage for a showdown with Parliament and a possible rendezvous with the courts.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said that the government would release only “legally available” documents on whether Afghan prisoners detained by Canadian forces were subject to torture when handed over to local authorities, and what the government knew about the issue. The definition of that is apparently going to be established in days and perhaps weeks to come by officials.
“These are done by experts, non-partisan individuals, who have a look at these things, who have no other interests but the best interests and security of Canadians, particularly those Canadians in uniform,” Nicholson said.
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said that’s not good enough, and the government is standing in the way of democratic rights.
“This is about democracy. Last night, the House of Commons said ‘We need the documents. We need all the documents. We need to end the censure. We need to end all this wiping-out of documents.’
“We need the truth. This is about the honour of Canada. This about torture. This is about our human-rights reputation,” Ignatieff told reporters in Montreal.
“This is an issue about fundamental democracy in Canada and we see absolutely no reason why the government just can’t do what Parliament says.”
International Trade Minister Stockwell Day indicated this morning that the opposition parties would have to go to the courts to get all the information they’re seeking.
A PMO spokesperson later confirmed that the Conservative government does not intend to turn over the documents as ordered by Parliament.
The government will respect laws intended to protect national security and the operational security of the Afghan mission, the spokesperson said.
“When people ask for all the information, when they ask for every little bit of information … it would be naive to the extreme to think that that information can be given out. I don’t think Canadians would like the fact that our troops would be unnecessarily exposed,” Day told reporters during the release of a quarterly progress report on Canadian involvement in Afghanistan.
“But if there’s a piece of information that somebody doesn’t have, there is a process,” Day said.
The Liberals narrowly pushed through a motion in the Commons on Thursday that forces the Harper government to release waves of unedited documents on Afghan detainee treatment. The motion passed with a vote of 145-143, and has legal force – Parliament, according to the Commons law clerk, represents the ultimate court in the land.
But the government and the department of justice are arguing that other laws – those protecting national security, for instance – take priority, and Day made clear today that the Conservative government intends to use that interpretation to block the documents’ release.
“We are not going to make information available just readily, about friend and foe alike, about specific items, about a security operation that could imperil our own troops and could imperil the citizens,” Day said.
The government fought hard Thursday against the release of information, arguing that the Taliban would profit from the data, while soldiers and Canada’s partners abroad could be compromised.
Information about when and how Canadian officials visit particular prisons, for instance, “would be of great value to the insurgents, and to the terrorists,” said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said such arguments were “ridiculous.”
“The risk of putting anybody in operational danger is about zero, but even if there was a case of operational risk, a parliamentary committee could find a way to get the documents,” Ignatieff said.
He said the Liberals were forced to take this measure because of the way the Conservatives have been releasing documents surrounding the detainee-transfer issue for the past few years – either with significant portions blacked out, or indiscriminately sharing more documents with friendly sources outside Parliament than with MPs.
The issue has become more contentious in the wake of recent testimony to a committee of MPs by senior Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin that he had warned of potential detainee torture while he served in Afghanistan, but that his warnings were ignored.
Then on Wednesday, chief of defence staff Gen. Walter Natynczyk produced evidence that a prisoner detained by Canadians and transferred to Afghan police in June 2006 was abused – only a day after he had given contrary testimony to a Commons committee.
Natynczyk also cited a report that said soldiers photographed the detainee before the transfer to ensure that if Afghan police abused him “as had happened in the past,” they would have a record of his condition. Intelligence specialist Wesley Wark said the heavy censorship of the documents supplied to the parliamentary committee probing the handling of prisoners has turned the hearings into a “farce.”
With files from Les Whittington
Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan Threaten Obama Policy January 4, 2010
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: afghan insurgency, Afghanistan, afghanistan cia, afghanistan government, afghanistan surge, Afghanistan War, al-Qaeda, cia, civilian casualties, drone missile, juan cole, Karzai, mchrysstal, roger hollander, student protests, Taliban
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You probably won’t see it in most US news outlets, but on Monday morning in Kabul and Jalalabad, hundreds of university students demonstrated against US strikes this weekend that allegedly killed a number of civilians. I want to underline the irony that the students in Tehran University are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while students in these two Afghan cities are calling for Yankees to go home. Nangarhar University in Jalalabad only has a student body of about 3200, so ‘hundreds’ of students protesting there would be a significant proportion of the student body.
The demonstrations could be a harbinger of things to come, but there was worse news. CIA field officers blown up, four US troops killed Sunday, and the rejection of most of the cabinet nominees by parliament, all signal rocky times ahead.
The past two weeks have seen the situation in Afghanistan deteriorate palpably, raising significant questions about the viability of the Obama-McChrysstal plan for the country. The chain of catastrophes has been reported in piecemeal fashion, but taken together these events are far more ominous than they might appear on the surface.
First, the US military launched a raid in Kunar Province two days after Christmas on a village a night, in which President Hamid Karzai alleged that 10 civilians, some 8 of them schoolchildren, had been killed (some say dragged out of their beds and executed). The NYT reported the head of a Kabul delegation to the village saying,”They gathered eight school students from two compounds and put them in one room and shot them with small arms.” (The spokesman is a former governor of Kunar and now a close adviser to President Hamid Karzai– i.e. not exactly a pro-Taliban source). The charitable theory is that in a nighttime raid, US troops got disoriented and hit the wrong group of young men.
The outraged Afghan public saw this raid as an atrocity, and on Wednesday December 30, they mounted street protests against the US in Jalalabad, an eastern Pashtun city, and Kabul. In Jalalabad, hundreds of university students blocked the main roads, and then marched in the streets, chanting “Death to Obama” and “Death to America,” and burning Obama in effigy. (If they go on like that, the anti-imperialist Pashtun college students of Jalalabad may attract the support of Fox Cable News . . .)
Even while the protests were taking place in Jalalabad and Kabul, a NATO missile strike on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province was alleged to have killed as many as 7 more civilians, some of them children. Now the Afghan public was really angry.
Then on Thursday, all hell broke loose when a high-level Pashtun asset who had been informing to the CIA on the location of important al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives detonated a vest bomb at FOB Chapman in Khost province, a CIA forward base. The attacker killed 7 field officers and one Jordanian intelligence operative detailed to the base. Those experience field officers were on the front lines in the fight against al-Qaeda and their loss is a big blow to counter-terrorism. It is true that they had been drawn in to a campaign of assassination, but it is the president who gave them that task–unwisely, in my view.
The use of a double agent not only to misinform but actually to kill the most experienced counter-terrorism officers in the region showed the sophistication of tactical thinking in the Afghan insurgency.
The CIA’s dependence on a double agent who finally openly betrayed them raises troubling questions about US strategy and tactics in the region. Such informants essentially direct CIA drone missile strikes.
You could imagine Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani Network in Khost and over the border in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, inserting such a double agent into FOB Chapman and then using the CIA. For instance, what if a middling member of the Haqqani network launched a challenge to Siraj’s leadership and that of his ailing father, Jalaluddin (an old-time ally of Reagan who was warmly greeted in the White House in the 1980s)? Wouldn’t it be easy enough just to have the double agent tell the CIA that the challenger is a really bad guy in cahoots with al-Qaeda? Boom. Drone strike kills Taliban leaders in North Waziristan. In this way, Siraj could have used the US to eliminate rivals and become more and more powerful. And how many double agents have given up a few Arab jihadis who had fallen out with the Haqqanis, but then deliberately followed this up with bad intel on some innocent village, making the name of the US mud among the Pashtuns.
The drone strikes shouldn’t be run by the CIA, and probably shouldn’t be run at all. It could well be that savvy old-time Mujahidin trained in CIA tradecraft in the 1980s are having our young wet behind the ears field officers for lunch.
In short, is the bombing at FOB Chapman the tip of an iceberg of misinformation, on which the Titanic of Obama’s AfPak policy could well founder?
Aljazeera English has video of these dramatic events leading up to the New Year, including the anti-US demonstrations, which looked big and significant to me on satellite television.
A soldier of the Afghan army shot an American soldier, further raising suspicions between the two supposed partners. Then a Canadian unit and embedded journalist were blown up.
There were more errant US strikes over the weekend, producing the demonstrations in Kabul and Jalalabad on Monday morning.
Then there were two other pieces of information coming out in the past few days that suggest all is not well.
First, a report on the Afghanistan Army threw cold water all over the idea that it could be enlarged and trained to provide security in the country any time soon. High desertion rates, illiteracy, working half days, refusal to stand and fight against the enemy, and other factors just made that prospect remote. But such training, and the substitution of the Afghan National Army for NATO and US forces is the centerpiece of the Obama-McChrystal plan.
Finally, the Afghan parliament rejected 17 of the 24 nominees to the cabinet offered by President Karzai. The speaker of the House, Yunus Qanuni, supported Karzai’s rival, Abdullah Abdullah, in August’s presidential elections– which many Afghans believe Karzai stole. This rejection was the Abdullah faction’s chance to humiliate Karzai in revenge.
Aljazeera English has video on the rejection of 70 percent of the cabinet, including the old time warlord of Herat, Ismail Khan, and a key women’s affairs minister.
But the step means that we go into the winter with 17 ministries headless. Having an increasingly competent Afghan government to partner with was another key element of the Obama plan. There is not one.
So, the US is killing schoolchildren far too often, enraging the Afghan public. It has provoked a studnet protest movement against it in Jalalabad and Kabul. Its informants are double agents. Its supposed partner, the Afghan army, mostly doesn’t actually exist and couldn’t be depended on to show up to anything important; and that is when they aren’t taking potshots at US troops; and there is no Afghan government as we go into 2010.
President Obama may have a lot on his plate, but Afghanistan could make or break his presidency. If he doesn’t view what has happened there while he was in Hawaii with alarm and begin thinking of alternative strategies, he could be in big trouble.
© 2010 Juan Cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.