Drones allow America to violate national borders for selective killing

The chief selling point for America's drone program is that rather than the mass killing of all out war, drones allow us to violate the boundaries of other nations, e.g., Pakistan, and kill targeted individuals. Of course, that's based on the either-or fallacy that all out war or drone attacks are the only U.S. options. It seems the White House, under both Bush and Obama, has consistently refused to consider a comprehensive approach to fighting terrorism, which would include education and outreach.

Was anyone listening recently when Mallala Yousafzai told President Obama that drones create terrorists?

Today the Huffington Post headline above Matt Sledge's article reads: Why did America kill my mother?

Sledge writes:

WASHINGTON -- He thought little of the U.S. drone buzzing over his family's house one day last year, its incessant sound just one more addition to the rhythm of daily life in northwest Pakistan. 

As he walked home from school, his grandmother told him to eat a snack before coming to the field to help her pick okra. It was the eve of one of the holiest holidays in Islam, when they would gather for a favorite family dish. He went outside.

Dum, dum -- the sounds of missiles pierced the air.

"All of a sudden things became very dark," Zubair Rehman, 13, remembered. The next thing he knew, his grandmother, Mamana Bibi, was gone. "It was like she was exploded to pieces."

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John Brennan, Obama's killing czar, opposes drone war?

President Obama listens to Brennan's report. Credits: Public domain.

John O. Brennan's official title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, as well as assistant to the president.  Unofficially, the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf has dubbed Brennan the Obama Administration's Killing Czar. And according to Friedersdorf, even Brennan has qualms about the drone war:

In Djibouti, a small East African country on the Gulf of Aiden, the United States launches killer drones that strike in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. Last spring, as one of the drones sat on a runway, it suddenly came alive "without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed," the Washington Post reports. "Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the 'brains' of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem." It's an anecdote that underscores how easily things can go wrong as America rapidly expands drone fleets and missions. It isn't just that drones are frequently crashing, sometimes on urban neighborhoods, in the part of the world where John Brennan, the top counterterrorism adviser to President Obama, says that he's been most successful controlling the unmanned program. It's that a drone there isn't or wasn't entirely under the control of its minders!

With that in mind, let's turn to Pakistan, where America has carried out more drone strikes than anywhere else. Remarkably, the man who has more power than anyone save Obama over America's kill list has unwittingly made an air-tight argument that the drone war, as presently waged, is deeply problematic. That's what I gleaned from a close reading of the three-part Washington Post series on kill lists, which quotes Brennan and others familiar with his thinking at length.

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A chilling commentary on Obama’s secret ‘kill list’

President Obama with National Security Adviser Donilon, (L) and top counterterrorism adviser Brennan. Pete Souza,  White House.

This thoughtful, objective NY Times article describes President Obama’s ruthless, take no prisoners approach to fighting terrorism; whereas, Hillary Clinton emerges several times as the voice of reason. Authors Jo Becker and Scott Shane write:

WASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.  

President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.

Becker and Shane continue:

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

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The dark future foretold by drones: detaching brutality from humanity

The Reaper drone. Photo credits: Public Domain.

In A Brief History of Drones at The Nation, John Sifton points out the frightening linguistics associated with America’s unmanned aircraft:

The weapons’ names suggest ruthless and inhumane characteristics. The first drone aircraft deployed by the CIA and Air Force after 2001 was the Predator, a rather coarse name even for a weapons system, suggestive that the enemy was not human but merely prey, that military operations were not combat subject to the laws of war but a hunt. (Some of the computer software used by the military and the CIA to calculate expected civilian casualties during airstrikes is known in government circles as Bug Splat.) The Predator’s manufacturer, General Atomics, later developed the larger Reaper, a moniker implying that the United States was fate itself, cutting down enemies who were destined to die. That the drones’ payloads were called Hellfire missiles, invoking the punishment of the afterlife, added to a sense of righteousness.

Sifton continues:

But the real issue is the context of how drones kill. The curious characteristic of drones—and the names reinforce this—is that they are used primarily to target individual humans, not places or military forces as such. Yet they simultaneously obscure the human role in perpetrating the violence. Unlike a missile strike, in which a physical or geographic target is chosen beforehand, drones linger, looking precisely for a target—a human target. And yet, at the same time, the perpetrator of the violence is not physically present. Observers are drawn toward thinking that it is the Predator that kills Anwar al-Awlaki, or its Hellfire missiles, not the CIA officers who order the weapons’ engagement. On the one hand, we have the most intimate form of violence—the targeted killing of a specific person, which in some contexts is called assassination—while on the other hand, the least intimate of weapons.

This characteristic, the distance between targets and CIA executive officers at Langley, is the defining characteristic of drones. They are the zenith of the technological quest that runs back to the invention of slings and arrows thousands of years ago, efforts of the earliest perpetrators of violence to get away from their victims. That process, which brought catapults and later artillery, reached its first peak with the development of intercontinental nuclear missiles; but those are weapons of limited tactical use and have never been used. Drones allow all the alienation of long-range missions but with much more flexibility and capacity for everyday use. The net result is everyday violence with all the distance and alienation of ICBMs. This is disturbing perhaps because alienation is disturbing.

Sifton concludes:

The issue is not that armed drones are more terrible or deadly than other weapons systems. On the contrary, the violence of drones today is more selective than many forms of military violence, and human rights groups recognize that drones, in comparison with less precise weapons, have the potential to minimize civilian casualties during legitimate military strikes.

Nor is the issue the remote delivery of weapons: alienation from the effects of violence reached a high-water mark in World War I. What makes drones disturbing is an unusual combination of characteristics: the distance between killer and killed, the asymmetry, the prospect of automation and, most of all, the minimization of pilot risk and political risk. It is the merging of these characteristics that draws the attention of journalists, military analysts, human rights researchers and Al Qaeda propagandists, suggesting something disturbing about what human violence may become. The unique technology allows the mundane and regular violence of military force to be separated further from human emotion. Drones foreshadow the idea that brutality could become detached from humanity—and yield violence that is, as it were, unconscious.

In this sense, drones foretell a future that is very dark indeed.

Al Qaeda tongue-tied in the face of uprisings in the Arab world

New challenges to bin Ladenism

NY Times foreign affairs correspondent Tom Friedman raises some good questions about U.S. involvement in the Middle East and the Arab world.

In this morning's op-ed, Friedman asks:

When one looks across the Arab world today at the stunning spontaneous democracy uprisings, it is impossible to not ask: What are we doing spending $110 billion this year supporting corrupt and unpopular regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are almost identical to the governments we’re applauding the Arab people for overthrowing?

He continues:

Ever since 9/11, the West has hoped for a war of ideas within the Muslim world that would feature an internal challenge to the violent radical Islamic ideology of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That contest, though, never really materialized because the regimes we counted on to promote it found violent Muslim extremism a convenient foil, so they allowed it to persist. Moreover, these corrupt, crony capitalist Arab regimes were hardly the ideal carriers for an alternative to bin Ladenism. To the contrary, it was their abusive behavior and vicious suffocation of any kind of independent moderate centrist parties that fueled the extremism even more. 

Now the people themselves have taken down those regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and they’re rattling the ones in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman and Iran. They are not doing it for us, or to answer bin Laden. They are doing it by themselves for themselves — because they want their freedom and to control their own destinies. But in doing so they have created a hugely powerful, modernizing challenge to bin Ladenism, which is why Al Qaeda today is tongue-tied. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

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Pulitzer prize-winning Friedman’s educational background gives him additional credibility on today’s topic: he received a B.A. degree in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975 and in 1978 he received a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford.

Secretary Clinton Hosts Trilateral Talks with Pakistan and Afghanistan

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Afghanistan's Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, left, and Pakistan's Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Photo credits: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Watching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s poise in visiting with one head of state after another in recent weeks while keeping the ignorant dolts in the media at bay has been a rewarding experience in itself. You had to love the way she reminded the press during her Asian trip that stating the obvious isn’t news.

Clinton is on the go. Between her Asian trip and her upcoming visit to the Middle East, she has hosted “valuable” trilateral meetings with Afghan foreign minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta and his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung reports:

The unprecedented trilateral talks were part of a U.S. effort to encourage cooperation between the neighboring governments over terrorist inroads in both countries. They came as the Obama administration is conducting a strategic review of the foundering Afghan war effort and of its policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Delegations from both countries included defense and intelligence ministers, as well as diplomatic chiefs.

"Our basic purpose was to exchange views on the strategic issues now being reviewed in our policy review by the Obama administration," Clinton said. "That goal has been amply fulfilled." No specific agreements were announced.

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Sober Obama Fields Tough Questions (watch video)

Mr. Obama showed a stern demeanor this evening in the first formal press conference of his still new administration as he fielded several questions about the stimulus bill, safe havens for terrorists between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and a timetable for American forces in Afghanistan.

He chided Republican critics of the stimulus bill by reminding them more than once that their failed policies helped create the financial meltdown, and Americans voted for change in November.

The streaming video has concluded. Sorry.

For Jeff Zeleny's live blogging at the Caucus (NY Times) of Obama's news conference go here.

Will the Afghan Quagmire Become Barack Obama’s War?

NY Times columnist Bob Herbert has begun to emerge from the euphoria common to Obama supporters since the president-elect first announced his candidacy by declaring himself the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln from the steps of the old capital building in Springfield, Ill.

In today’s op-ed Herbert offers a sober critique of Obama’s campaign promise of a military surge in Afghanistan and explains how it might easily become Obama’s war. Herbert writes:

“The economy is obviously issue No. 1 as Barack Obama prepares to take over the presidency. He’s charged with no less a task than pulling the country out of a brutal recession. If the worst-case scenarios materialize, his job will be to stave off a depression.

“That’s enough to keep any president pretty well occupied. What Mr. Obama doesn’t need, and what the U.S. cannot under any circumstances afford, is any more unnecessary warfare. And yet, while we haven’t even figured out how to extricate ourselves from the disaster in Iraq, Mr. Obama is planning to commit thousands of additional American troops to the war in Afghanistan, which is already more than seven years old and which long ago turned into a quagmire.”

Herbert cites other sources in Times and Newsweek to make the point that escalating the war in Afghanistan forces radical Islamists over the border into Pakistan threatening to destabilize that nuclear-armed nation.

Herbert contends:

“Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require a wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government at the expense of rebuilding the United States, which is falling apart before our very eyes.”

Noting the corruption of the Afghanistan government including President Karzai, Herbert maintains:

“If Mr. Obama does send more troops to Afghanistan, he should go on television and tell the American people, in the clearest possible language, what he is trying to achieve. He should spell out the mission’s goals, and lay out an exit strategy.

“He will owe that to the public because he will own the conflict at that point. It will be Barack Obama’s war.”

Pakistan Election Long Seen as Face-Off Between Party Leaders

In response to Politico's recent accusation that Hillary Clinton erred on Pakistan in recent appearances on CNN and ABC, a quick scan of the news coverage in Pakistan before and after Benizir Bhutto’s death, makes clear the upcoming election was widely considered a face-off between Musharraf and Bhutto.

For example, Reuters/Canada reported yesterday:

“Western nations appealed for calm and sporadic violence erupted in the southern city of Hyderabad. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party said it would take part in the elections despite the loss of its leader.

"A spokeswoman said any postponement would help the PPP's opponents. The other main opposition party said it would also take part despite earlier threats of a boycott.

"A former ruling party official said the election was likely to be delayed for up to two months but Musharraf opponents said postponement would deliver a political advantage to his supporters.”

Clinton Calls for International Investigation of Bhutto’s Death

Photo Credits: Associated Press

In the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Hillary Clinton has responded both personally and presidentially.


On Thursday, Clinton reflected with warmth on her long-time acquaintance with Bhutto:


Today the world once again is reminded of the dangers facing those who pursue democracy and free elections, in Pakistan and elsewhere in areas that are rife with conflict and violence and extremism and anti-democratic forces at work," Clinton said at the start of a campaign event here in western Iowa. "I have known Benazir Bhutto for a dozen years and I knew her as a leader. I knew her as someone willing to take risks.


On the campaign trail a day later, Clinton called for a “full, independent, international, investigation” of Bhutto’s sudden and violent death. Noting that the Pakistani government under President Musharraf has no credibility, Clinton added, "They have disbanded an independent judiciary. They have oppressed a free press."


In today’s NY Times, Patrick Healey compares the responses of the several candidates to Bhutto’s death. Healey begins by noting:

For the presidential candidates, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has emerged as a ghoulish sort of test: a chance to project leadership and competence — or not — on a fast-moving and nuanced foreign policy issue.


Several paragraphs down, Healey highlights Obama’s initial response that soon morphed into an opportunistic attack on Hillary Clinton:

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois tried to sound like both a leader and a candidate on Pakistan on Friday. At one point, he said he would suspend some military aid to Pakistan if the government did not hold free elections and clamp down on terrorist groups. At another point, though, he suggested that the war in Iraq — which his rivals Mrs. Clinton, John Edwards and others had voted for — had “resulted in us taking our eye off the ball” in pursuing Al Qaeda and bringing stability to the region.

Obama’s obvious inexperience in foreign affairs does not excuse his reprehensible attack on Hillary Clinton as she grieves the loss of someone she’d known as a peer.


Even as she grieved, however, it bears repeating that Clinton responded presidentially in calling for an international investigation of Bhutto’s death.

Bhutto Dies a Martyr’s Death

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto prays as she arrives in Karachi after eight years of self-exile in this October 18, 2007 file photo. Photo Credits: REUTERS/Petr Josek/Files

Word of the assassination of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto this morning brought an overwhelming sense of loss. As I’ve followed news of political developments in Pakistan in recent months, I’ve marveled at Bhutto’s courage as she continued to put her life at risk for her beliefs and the people she loved.

As the Reuters account points out, her death puts the upcoming Jan. 8 polls in doubt. And certainly no one can argue with the party official who said she had been martyred.

Distorting Lincoln’s Record for Political Gain

Shortly after Pervez Musharraf used Abe Lincoln to justify imposing emergency law on Pakistan, I cited in a post dated Nov. 6, a piece by Daily Kos’s Devilstower that traced a similar distortion of President Lincoln’s acts by Bush ’43 and other conservative leaders going back to Richard Nixon.

Just today I received an astute comment to my Nov. 6th post from Geoff Elliott who maintains an informative, well-written blog on Abraham Lincoln.

In his comment, Geoff said: "It never ceases to amaze me how our political "leaders" continue to distort Abraham Lincoln's record. Bush claims that the events of 9/11 made it necessary to violate our civil rights, permit warrantless searches and so on. He and his supporters even claim that the dangers posed by terrorists make this situation as dangerous as was the Civil War.

"Hardly. During the Civil War, a rival government had been established less than 200 miles from Washington. Rebel armies were marching towards Washington.

"Lincoln was trying to preserve the Union. Bush is trying to preserve himself. Big difference."

A warm thank you to Geoff and please note I’ve added his Lincoln blog to my list of links.

A Coup is a Coup is a Coup

I’ve got to get the pot roast on for Sunday dinner and leave for church in a few minutes, but before I head out, I wanted to point you to Frank Rich’s column in today’s NY Times.

Rich explains that Musharraf’s recent coup in Pakistan should come as no surprise to Americans as we’ve been undergoing a coup ever since George W. Bush became president and in fact, Musharraf is simply following Dubya's example:

"More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he’s championing democracy even as he strangles it. Mr. Bush repeated the word “freedom” 27 times in roughly 20 minutes at his 2005 inauguration, and even presided over a “Celebration of Freedom” concert on the Ellipse hosted by Ryan Seacrest. It was an Orwellian exercise in branding, nothing more. The sole point was to give cover to our habitual practice of cozying up to despots (especially those who control the oil spigots) and to our own government’s embrace of warrantless wiretapping and torture, among other policies that invert our values.

"Even if Mr. Bush had the guts to condemn General Musharraf, there is no longer any moral high ground left for him to stand on. Quite the contrary. Rather than set a democratic example, our president has instead served as a model of unconstitutional behavior, eagerly emulated by his Pakistani acolyte."

Yikes! The guy we elected president on a values platform no longer has any moral high ground left to stand on. Let’s think about that as we consider the candidates for 2008, especially those like Rudy Giuliani going through their contortionist’s fits to appeal to Pat Robertson, et al.

Gotta go. Your comments are always appreciated.

The Far-Reaching Effects of the Quagmire in Iraq

Brent Budowsky’s hard-hitting op-ed in Tuesday’s edition of the Hill begins:

Democrats in 2008 have an issue more powerful than Kennedy’s campaign against Nixon and the missile gap in 1960, and Reagan’s campaign against Carter championing military strength in 1980.President Bush is so obsessed with Iraq that he damages the war in Afghanistan, contributes to destabilizing Pakistan, fails to kill Osama bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda, and does grave harm to our military and troops.

There’s no let up from Budowsky:

The quagmire in Iraq and grave damage to our mission in Afghanistan continues. The escape of Osama bin Laden and resurgence of al Qaeda continues. The ability of Iran to exploit the Bush blunders in Iraq continues. The damage to our military, the ugly divisions in our nation, and the global loathing of our president are escalating.

There’s more:

Of course, the real war to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda is failing because the obsession with Iraq has stolen manpower, money and unity that is necessary to win this war, and this is the one television ad Democrats should run throughout America.

Budowsky’s piece seems intended to light a fire under the Democrats, but in fact, it should ignite the entire country in preparation for the coming presidential election. This is one op-ed that deserves to be read in its entirety.

Lincoln’s Impersonators: Musharraf, Bush, Nixon, et al

In light of Pervez Musharraf’s reference to Abe Lincoln to justify imposing emergency law on Pakistan Saturday, Daily Kos’s Devilstower traces a similar distortion of Lincoln’s acts as president by Bush ’43 and other conservative leaders going back to Richard Nixon.

History books will tell you that Abraham Lincoln was a champion wrestler in his youth. But for the last forty years, it's been Lincoln who has taken the fall. Again and again, Republicans have seized the first man to become president under their banner and dragged him to the ground, determined that he should be thoroughly coated in their own muddy morals.

Examples of the above include:

They've pressed the idea of a Lincoln who shredded the Constitution at will. Did Bush ignore habeas corpus? No matter, look at Lincoln. He suspended those rights entirely. Did Bush institute military tribunals? Why... so did Abe!
Did Bush, Cheney, Nixon, and Reagan adopt extraordinary levels of executive privilege and secrecy? Toss 'em a stovepipe hat, they're only following the model set by our greatest president. Bush wiretapped phone lines without judicial oversight. Well Lincoln did to, and he did it before phones had even been invented. You can even hear the words of this Lincoln absolution expressed in the testimony of Michael Mukasey, when he says that the president's role as commander in chief can exempt him from the bonds of petty law.

Devilstower concludes that Lincoln “-- unlike Musharraf, unlike Bush, unlike Nixon -- never mistook expansion of his own power for preservation of the union.”

Now That We've Armed Pakistan

Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch zeroes in today on the tendency of the Bush anti-terror policies to backfire. Froomkin writes:

The ultimate anti-terror backfire, of course, is the war in Iraq, which U.S. intelligence shows has helped al Qaeda much more than it's hurt it.But now, with Musharraf declaring emergency rule over the weekend, the country that Bush considers a bulwark against terror may gain infamy as a crucible for terror
instead.

Froomkin cites Karen DeYoung’s piece in today’s Washington Post:

"The Bush administration seemed to still be reeling from Musharraf's announcement Saturday and waiting for the rapidly shifting events to settle before making any move beyond expressing strong disapproval.

"U.S. aid to Pakistan over the past six years has totaled nearly $11 billion, most of it in military hardware and budget support. Immediately after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush lifted aid sanctions imposed on Pakistan and India after both countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
Additional sanctions set against Pakistan after Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 were also waived."

In light of all the above, this item in Froomkin’s post seems an appropriate way to conclude:

CBS News reports that "a statewide poll conducted by CBS affiliate WCAX in Burlington, Vt. posed the question to 400 likely voters. Sixty-one percent said they would be in favor of Congress beginning impeachment proceedings against
President Bush. Thirty-three percent opposed it, and 6% were not sure.

"The numbers for Vice President Cheney differed only slightly: Sixty-four percent favored impeachment, while 31% opposed it."