OMNI, OBAMA’S NEWSLETTER #1, December 12, 2013.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Caring, Peace, Justice, and
Ecology.
My blog:
War Department/Peace Department
War Department/Peace Department
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Index:
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Contents #1
Introduction
Three main groups seek to
characterize President Obama: 1) the
Democratic Party, 2) the Republican Party, and 3) the wide variety of
individuals and groups (the Green Party) who want the President to be more
idealistic, utopian, and more vigorous regarding nonviolence, world peace,
social and economic justice, human rights, democracy, and protection of the
earth and species. The Democrats present
the good things the President has achieved, and the Republicans present the bad;
both Parties have the money to present their perceptions amply to the
public. The third group lacks Party and
Money ((the Green comparatively very poor and therefore unheard). This collection of essays, a tiny sample,
criticizes the president for failing to live up to certain ideals and
practices, including the inconsistency between what he says and what he
does. All three groups, if they wish to
understand President Obama and thereby perhaps to see their own positions
prevail, would be wise to read the arguments by their opponents.
I have arranged the essays and
one book roughly from general critiques to specific, single topics, and then at
the end to a broad coverage again..
Contents
Six General Essays
Conniff, Obama Likes Bush
Scheer, Obama Close to Financial Power
Davies, Obama Serves Ruling Class
Madsen, Obama and CIA
Rothschild, Five of Obama’s Broken Promises
Friedersdo, Biggest Scandals Ignored
Three on Censorship of Whistleblowers and Journalists
Greenwald on Whistleblowers
Solomon on Journalism
Editors of The
Nation
Totten, No Aid to Nuba People
Three on Middle East
Swanson, Failed Peace
Ruebner, Shattered Hopes
Cynthia McKinney, Illegal War
on Libya
Four on Drones
Yemen
Moyers
Sanders, Pathology of
Presidential Power
Monbiot, Children Killed
Marshall
Two on Revoking Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize
Ruth Conniff, “The Bush
Playbook,” The Progressive October
2013). Conniff is the new editor of The Progressive.
Look for this online
OBAMA, FRIEND OF
CORRUPT BANKS, BUDDY OF JAMIE DIMON
Wednesday, September
25, 2013
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Obama’s Friends in Low
Places
That Barack Obama is such a kidder. No matter
how awkward the moment, he’s got just the right quip to purchase some wiggle
room. Remember when his old Chicago banking buddy Jamie Dimon, the CEO of
JPMorgan Chase, first ran into that bit of trouble over his bank’s “London
Whale” derivative scam? That scheme has already lost $6 billion with close to
another $1 billion piled on by the SEC in fines last week after JPMorgan
admitted it broke the law.
Well of course, being Obama, when the scandal
first broke last year, the president picked a women’s daytime talk show, ABC’s
“The View,” to deal with the scams of his leading Wall Street backer. “JPMorgan
is one of the best-managed banks there is,” he told the “View” audience. “Jamie
Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got, and they still
lost $2 billion and counting.”
Yes, counting; that $2 billion is now likely
to end up around $16 billion given the future legal fees and possible payouts
allotted to countering the myriad lawsuits connected with this admission of
illegal activity. That’s aside from the mortgage fraud, Libor rate rigging and
energy manipulation cases still confronting the beleaguered bank. Thursday, on
the same day that Dimon’s bank got slapped with the SEC fine, federal
regulators revealed that JPMorgan had agreed to pay $389 million in penalties
and refunds to compensate for a credit card identity theft protection scam
after $309 million already paid out in that case.
It should be remembered that this same Dimon, who appeared before a Senate
committee wearing presidential cufflinks, once worked with Sanford Weill in
engineering the reversal of the
Glass-Steagall law to make Citigroup, a previously illegal merger of
investment and commercial banks, possible. But despite his record as a leader
in the radical deregulation of banking that caused all of the trouble, Obama
turned to Dimon for direction on fixing the economy.
If you still require to be disabused of Obama’s
pretend populism, consider his decision to select William M. Daley, JPMorgan’s
representative in Washington
It was a real cozy arrangement; Dimon was
still a governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, where he had served
during Geithner’s presidency overseeing the banking meltdown. Geithner had been
instrumental in arranging Fed financing for JPMorgan’s acquisition of troubled
Bear Stearns through a $55 billion loan and later an additional $25 billion in
TARP funds.
Once appointed Treasury secretary, Geithner
made himself very accessible to Dimon. As an Associated Press investigation
reported, Dimon had numerous personal meetings and phone calls with Geithner
while the White House was calibrating its response to the Wall Street
crisis.
Why are
we not surprised that Obama has done nothing to break up the too-big-to-fail
banks, the biggest now being Dimon’s? Don’t be fooled by the occasional fines;
the banks have used the interest-free money to grow ever larger and more
unaccountable in their behavior.
Even the recent SEC settlement, while
mentioning the despicable behavior of JPMorgan’s chief executive, fails to
utter Dimon’s name, and as Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who did much to unravel
this scam, noted, “the whole issue of misinforming investors and the public is
conspicuously absent from the SEC findings and settlement.”
After the SEC condemnation of JPMorgan’s
“egregious breakdowns in controls” and conclusion that “senior management broke
a cardinal rule of corporate management” to honestly inform the board of
directors, top senior manager Dimon made all the right noises. JPMorgan
announced that $4 billion and a staff of 5,000 employees would be devoted to
compliance with the law.
This was just the sort of commitment Dimon
made in 2006 when he hired Stephen M. Cutler, who had been head of the SEC
Division of Enforcement, to be JPMorgan’s general counsel. Once a committed
regulator who urged corporations “to create a culture of compliance,” Cutler
clearly drank the Kool-Aid at JPMorgan, for he was in charge of legal and
compliance activities worldwide at the time of the London Whale fiasco. So much
for trusting corporate compliance.
As Donald Langevoort, an expert on compliance
issues at Georgetown University School of Law, told The New York Times on
Friday, “JPMorgan is by no means unique. None of these big banks really want
compliance people causing traders and investment bankers to second-guess
themselves too much because that gets in the way of making money. No one will
say this, but it’s more effective to run the risk of noncompliance and pay a
few fines, which is just a cost of doing business.”
Exactly the reason that too-big-to-fail banks
can’t be trusted to do the right thing and why Obama shouldn’t have been guided
by Dimon in the first place.
© 2013 TruthDig.com
Robert
Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco
NICOLAS
J. S. DAVIES, “FROM OHLENDORF TO OBAMA.”
Z MAGAZINE (September
2013). The US
GET THE ARTICLE
The
Manufacturing of a President
Paperback, 395 Pages
This book covers Barack H. Obama, Jr's rapid rise in American
politics and the role that the CIA played in propelling him into the White
House. Research is based on formerly classified CIA and State Department files,
personal interviews, and international investigations. Obama's birth
certificate has never been the issue. The real issue, which affects his
eligibility to serve as President of the United States South
Asia , and other regions. The real history of President Obama, his
family, and the CIA quickly emerges as the reader wades into the murky waters
of America
Obama
Gets Slippery on Killing U.S.
By Matthew
Rothschild, May 23, 2013
[A slightly different version of the following essay, entitled
“Obama’s Hollow Words,”: was published in The
Progressive (July 2013). This
analysis of Obama’s speech at the National
Defense University
1) Says he wants to close Guantanamo
2) Praises investigative
reporting but allows his Justice Department to steal phone records of AP
reporters, and
3) His JD to accuse reporter James Rosen of violating the
Espionage Act of 1917.
4) Assaults whistleblowers more than any preceding president.
5) Ordered killing of four US
That’s the first half of the essay. The last half examines his misuse of language
and sophistry—backpedaling, doubletalk—and habit of saying one thing and doing
another, while “his policies remain essentially unchanged.” --Dick]
President Obama has an eerie and alarming ability to detach himself
from his own dubious actions.
This character trait was on full display in his speech on Thursday
at the National Defense University
When he talked about the need to shut down Guantanamo America
Wise words, but hollow ones.
Hollow, because he could have closed Guantanamo
Hollow, because even today he could be releasing those prisoners
himself, rather than overseeing their force-feeding.
As the great constitutional scholar David Cole notes in the New York Review of Books, “Current law
permits the executive branch to waive some of the requirements when the
transfer ‘is in the national security interests of the United States
Similarly, Obama tried to detach himself from his own Justice
Department’s grabbing of the phone records of more than 100 AP reporters and
the claim by the Justice Department that Fox News’s James Rosen was a
“co-conspirator” in violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may
chill the investigative journalism that holds governments accountable,” Obama
said.
Then fire Eric Holder, for God’s sake.
But Obama really doesn’t want to do that. Nor does he want to step
back from the harsh assault on whistleblowers that he’s had Holder wage, again
using the Espionage Act. Obama admitted in his speech that he believes it is
necessary “to enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their
commitment to protect classified information.”
Most slippery was Obama on the subject of killing U.S.
“For the record,” he said, “I do not believe it would be
constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen—with a
drone, or a shotgun—without due process.”
But then he justified the assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki, without
acknowledging that Al-Awlaki received no due process.
Even more shabbily, he neglected to even mention by name the three
other American citizens his administration has rubbed out.
Samir Khan, a young editor of a magazine allegedly affiliated with
Al Qaeda, was killed by the same drone that struck down Al-Awlaki
A few weeks after they got al-Awlaki and Khan, they bumped off
Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki. Obama’s
former press secretary, said Abdulrahman should have had “a far more
responsible father.”
And now it comes out that they also bumped off Jude Kenan
Mohammed, a 23-year-old American citizen who had been radicalized and who had
gone to Pakistan
The Obama Administration doesn’t want to admit that they
intentionally killed any U.S.
Now I don’t care how much exercise President Obama wants to get by
backpedaling on this issue, the facts remain that he has acted like Tony
Soprano in the Oval Office.
And he cannot whisk the corpses of Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, Samir
Khan, and Jude Kenan Mohammed under the Oval Office rug.
By the way, these three never received due process, either. So by
Obama’s own standard, his Administration violated the Constitution by killing
them.
Obama did say some things that were a relief to hear.
It was good of him to say, “This war, like all wars, must end.
That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”
It was good of him to say that we are not fighting “a boundless
‘global war on terror’ ” but “specific networks of violent extremists that
threaten America
It was good of him to say that “we have faced down dangers far
greater than Al Qaeda.”
It was good of him to say that he wants to “ultimately repeal” the
Authorization for Use of Military Force of September 2001.
It was good of him to say that he is “haunted” by the civilian
deaths of non-American citizens who fell victim to our drones, that he
understands some of the civil liberties issues that are at stake here at home,
and that he is wary of vesting permanent wartime powers in the hands of the
President.
All these things are good, as far as they go.
But they don’t go very far.
Not when his policies remain essentially unchanged.
If you liked this story by Matthew
Rothschild, the editor of The
Progressive magazine, check out his story Obama Should Fire Holder over the AP Scandal.
Follow Matthew Rothschild @mattrothschild on Twitter
Mon May 27, 2013 7:56 am (PDT) .
Posted by:
"Nate Goldshlag" nategold Veterans for Peace
I like this article.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/the-biggest-obama-scandals-are-proven-and-ignored/275960/
Peace, Nate
Nate Goldshlag nateg at pobox.com (replace at with @)
Arlington
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/the-biggest-obama-scandals-are-proven-and-ignored/275960/
Peace, Nate
Nate Goldshlag nateg at pobox.com (replace at with @)
THREE ON OBAMA’S SUPPRESSION OF THE PRESS
AND WHISTLEBLOWERS
GOOGLE SEARCH, GREENWALD, “WAR ON
WHISTLEBLOWERS”
Part 2: Robert Greenwald on Film "War
on Whistleblowers: Free ...
Democracy
Now (blog)-Apr 18, 2013
The film, War on Whistleblowers, profiles
Michael DeKort, a Lockheed Martin project manager who posted a whistleblowing
video on YouTube.
|
2.
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald on "War on Whistleblowers: Free ...
Truth-Out-Apr 19, 2013
A new film directed by Robert Greenwald looks at four whistleblowers who had their lives practically
destroyed after they went to the press with ...
|
Norman Solomon
79
Obama's
Escalating War on Freedom of the Press
Follow
Eric Holder, Fox News, The New York
Times, Associated Press, Chilling Effect,Department Of
Justice, First Amendment, Fourth Circuit
Court Of Appeals, Freedom Of The
Press Foundation, James Risen, Marcy Wheeler, News Media
Policies, CIA, Civil Liberties, nsa, Surveillance, The Guardian, Trevor Timm, Whistleblowers, Media News
The part of the First Amendment that prohibits "abridging the
freedom ... of the press" is now up against the wall, as the Obama
administration continues to assault the kind of journalism that can expose
government secrets.
Last Friday the administration got what it wanted -- an ice-cold chilling effect -- from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on the case of New York Times reporter James Risen. The court "delivered a blow to investigative journalism inAmerica
The Executive Branch fought for that ruling -- and is now celebrating. "We agree with the decision," said a Justice Department spokesman. "We are examining the next steps in the prosecution of this case." The Risen case, and potentially many others, are now under the ominous shadow of the Appeals Court's pronouncement: "There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify ... in criminal proceedings."
At the Freedom of the Press Foundation, co-founder Trevor Timm calls the court ruling "the most significant reporter's privilege decision in decades" and asserts that the court "eviscerated that privilege." He's not exaggerating. Press freedom is at stake.
Journalists who can be compelled to violate the confidentiality of their sources, or otherwise go to prison, are reduced to doing little more than providing stenographic services to pass along the official story. That's what the White House wants.
The federal Fourth Circuit covers the geographical area where most of theU.S.
That court decision came seven days after the Justice Department released its "News Media Policies" report announcing "significant revisions to the Department's policies regarding investigations that involve members of the news media." The report offered assurances that "members of the news media will not be subject to prosecution based solely on newsgathering activities." (Hey thanks!) But the document quickly added that the government will take such action "as a last resort" when seeking information that is "essential to a successful investigation or prosecution."
Translation: We won't prosecute journalists for doing their jobs unless we really want to.
Over the weekend, some news accounts described Friday's court decision as bad timing for Attorney General Eric Holder, who has scrambled in recent weeks to soothe anger at the Justice Department's surveillance of journalists. "The ruling was awkwardly timed for the Obama administration," the New York Times reported. But the ruling wasn't just "awkwardly timed" -- it was revealing, and it underscored just how hostile the Obama White House has become toward freedom of the press.
News broke in May that the Justice Department had seized records of calls on more than 20 phone lines used by Associated Press reporters over a two-month period and had also doneintensive surveillance of a Fox News reporter that included obtaining phone records and reading his emails. Since then, the Obama administration tried to defuse the explosive reaction without actually retreating from its offensive against press freedom.
At a news conference two months ago, when President Obama refused to say a critical word about his Justice Department's targeted surveillance of reporters, he touted plans to reintroduce a bill for a federal shield law so journalists can protect their sources. But Obama didn't mention that he has insisted on a "national security exception" that would make such a law approximately worthless for reporters doing the kind of reporting that has resulted in government surveillance -- and has sometimes landed them in federal court.
Obama's current notion of a potential shield law would leave his administration fully able to block protection of journalistic sources. In a mid-May article -- headlined "White House Shield Bill Could Actually Make It Easier for the Government to Get Journalists' Sources" -- the Freedom of the Press Foundation shed light on the duplicity: As a supposed concession to press freedom, the president was calling for reintroduction of a 2009 Senate bill that "would not have helped the Associated Press in this case, and worse, it would actually make it easier for the Justice Department to subpoena journalists covering national security issues."
Whether hyping a scenario for a shield law or citing new Justice Department guidelines for news media policies, the cranked-up spin from the administration's PR machinery does not change the fact that Obama is doubling down on a commitment to routine surveillance of everyone, along with extreme measures specifically aimed at journalists -- and whistleblowers.
The administration's efforts to quash press freedom are in sync with its unrelenting persecution of whistleblowers. The purpose is to further choke off the flow of crucial information to the public, making informed "consent of the governed" impossible while imposing massive surveillance and other violations of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Behind the assault on civil liberties is maintenance of a warfare state with huge corporate military contracts and endless war. The whole agenda is repugnant and completely unacceptable.
Last Friday the administration got what it wanted -- an ice-cold chilling effect -- from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on the case of New York Times reporter James Risen. The court "delivered a blow to investigative journalism in
The Executive Branch fought for that ruling -- and is now celebrating. "We agree with the decision," said a Justice Department spokesman. "We are examining the next steps in the prosecution of this case." The Risen case, and potentially many others, are now under the ominous shadow of the Appeals Court's pronouncement: "There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify ... in criminal proceedings."
At the Freedom of the Press Foundation, co-founder Trevor Timm calls the court ruling "the most significant reporter's privilege decision in decades" and asserts that the court "eviscerated that privilege." He's not exaggerating. Press freedom is at stake.
Journalists who can be compelled to violate the confidentiality of their sources, or otherwise go to prison, are reduced to doing little more than providing stenographic services to pass along the official story. That's what the White House wants.
The federal Fourth Circuit covers the geographical area where most of the
That court decision came seven days after the Justice Department released its "News Media Policies" report announcing "significant revisions to the Department's policies regarding investigations that involve members of the news media." The report offered assurances that "members of the news media will not be subject to prosecution based solely on newsgathering activities." (Hey thanks!) But the document quickly added that the government will take such action "as a last resort" when seeking information that is "essential to a successful investigation or prosecution."
Translation: We won't prosecute journalists for doing their jobs unless we really want to.
Over the weekend, some news accounts described Friday's court decision as bad timing for Attorney General Eric Holder, who has scrambled in recent weeks to soothe anger at the Justice Department's surveillance of journalists. "The ruling was awkwardly timed for the Obama administration," the New York Times reported. But the ruling wasn't just "awkwardly timed" -- it was revealing, and it underscored just how hostile the Obama White House has become toward freedom of the press.
News broke in May that the Justice Department had seized records of calls on more than 20 phone lines used by Associated Press reporters over a two-month period and had also doneintensive surveillance of a Fox News reporter that included obtaining phone records and reading his emails. Since then, the Obama administration tried to defuse the explosive reaction without actually retreating from its offensive against press freedom.
At a news conference two months ago, when President Obama refused to say a critical word about his Justice Department's targeted surveillance of reporters, he touted plans to reintroduce a bill for a federal shield law so journalists can protect their sources. But Obama didn't mention that he has insisted on a "national security exception" that would make such a law approximately worthless for reporters doing the kind of reporting that has resulted in government surveillance -- and has sometimes landed them in federal court.
Obama's current notion of a potential shield law would leave his administration fully able to block protection of journalistic sources. In a mid-May article -- headlined "White House Shield Bill Could Actually Make It Easier for the Government to Get Journalists' Sources" -- the Freedom of the Press Foundation shed light on the duplicity: As a supposed concession to press freedom, the president was calling for reintroduction of a 2009 Senate bill that "would not have helped the Associated Press in this case, and worse, it would actually make it easier for the Justice Department to subpoena journalists covering national security issues."
Whether hyping a scenario for a shield law or citing new Justice Department guidelines for news media policies, the cranked-up spin from the administration's PR machinery does not change the fact that Obama is doubling down on a commitment to routine surveillance of everyone, along with extreme measures specifically aimed at journalists -- and whistleblowers.
The administration's efforts to quash press freedom are in sync with its unrelenting persecution of whistleblowers. The purpose is to further choke off the flow of crucial information to the public, making informed "consent of the governed" impossible while imposing massive surveillance and other violations of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Behind the assault on civil liberties is maintenance of a warfare state with huge corporate military contracts and endless war. The whole agenda is repugnant and completely unacceptable.
Obama's
Assault on the Press
Prosecution
of whistleblowers, dragnet seizure of phone records, the threatened
criminalization of basic news-gathering—it’s dangerous for the media, and
dangerous for democracy.
When Democrats nominated Barack Obama and Joseph Biden in 2008, there was relief that—after eight years of Bush/Cheney abuses—a major party was running, for the first time in our history, a pair of constitutional law instructors for president and vice president. With the Obama/Biden victory, many assumed that surely the new administration would respect the First Amendment, including the essential democratic role of a free press.
Not so.
Bush and Cheney set a bad example, but Obama and Biden have compounded the
damage. Truth-telling has suffered an
all-out assault—sometimes literally, as in the case of Pfc. Bradley
Manning, who has been detained in appalling conditions and now faces extreme
charges that should be dropped.
The current
administration knows better, but it has not done better. During Obama’s 2008
campaign, he accurately called
whistleblowers “the best source of information about waste, fraud and abuse
in government” and said that their “acts of courage and patriotism…should be
encouraged rather than stifled.” Yet his administration has invoked the Espionage Act a record six times since
2009—twice as many as in the previous ninety years.
Americans
understand that there are times when law enforcement agencies must strike a
balance between First Amendment guarantees and national-security needs. But
when the Justice Department secretly
obtained two months’ worth of phone
records of Associated Press reporters in at least four bureaus as part of
an attempt to track a leak, that was overreach on a dramatic scale. Even more
disturbing was the department’s investigation of the reporting activities of Fox News’s chief Washington
It’s even
more dangerous for democracy. Freedom of
the press was protected in the First
Amendment because the founders understood that democracy is impossible without journalism. “A popular government
without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a
farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both,” warned James Madison, who added that “a
people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power
which knowledge gives.”
Practically,
this means reporters must be able to engage in candid conversations with
government officials. Associated Press president Gary Pruitt says that the
reports of Justice Department crackdowns have made sources more reluctant to
talk to reporters. If the pattern continues, the Washington
This is an urgent concern. President
Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder claim to respect press freedom, yet they
make “no apologies” for the aggressive pursuit of leaks. They must reverse
course, and Congress has to prod them by passing a shield law for journalists
and specific legislation to guarantee privacy rights for all. A bipartisan group of House members—libertarian
Republicans and progressive Democrats—has proposed a Telephone Records Protection Act, which would require that the government
obtain court approval to get telephone records from service providers. That’s a
baseline standard for protecting the privacy of every American, including the
reporters, imperfect as they may be, who arm the citizenry with the power which
knowledge gives.
OBAMA’S FAILURE TO PROVIDE HUMANITARIAN
AID TO PEOPLE FACING EXTREME HARDSHIPS
Obama
Panel Sits Silent As People Perish
THOUSANDS IN NUBA MOUNTAINS
By SAMUEL TOTTEN Sunday,
June 16, 2013
Over the past 20 months, the government of Sudan has carried out daily bombings against the
unarmed civilians of the Nuba
Mountains
And as they do, the Obama Administration’s Atrocities
Prevention Board is absolutely silent.
Curious about what the board was doing in regard to the
crisis in the Nuba
Mountains
Again, she neglected to reply. In late February a letter
was sent to Steven Pomper, senior assistant director for Multilateral Affairs
and Human Rights, who is also a member of the Atrocities Prevention Board. He,
too, never replied. On March 28, a letter was sent to another member of the board,
Donald Steinberg, deputy administrator, USAID. And once again, there was no
reply.
During the course of a speech at the U.S.
And why has he allowed that to happen?
In that same speech, Obama said: “Last year, in the fi
rst-ever presidential directive on this challenge, I made it clear that
preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest
and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America United States
So I created the fi rst White House position dedicated to
this task.
It’s why I created a new Atrocities Prevention Board,to
bring together senior oftcials from across our government to focus on this
critical mission. This is not an afterthought. This is not a sideline in our
foreign policy.”
Sadly, Obama’s board seems to be even less than an
afterthought and a sideline to his foreign policy efforts, at least when it
comes to the ongoing tragedy in Sudan
About three weeks ago, an aide to an U.S.
Currently, it does not have a chairperson.” So much for
Mr. Obama’s genuine dedication to genocide prevention.
There is another issue at hand besides empty promises, and
that is the issue of transparency.
Time and again, President Obama has promised that his
administration would be the most transparent presidency in the history of the United States
We will work together to ensure the public trust and
establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.
Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness
in government.” Powerful words. A grand promise.
But when the rubber hits the road, both the words and
promise seem hollow, at least when it comes to the Atrocities Prevention Board.
Not only does the board refuse to respond to legitimate
correspondence raising key issues, but it does not have a website, does not
have a Twitteraccount, and does not list email addresses for its main oft ce or
individual members.
All of this is, quite obviously, totally antithetical to
the concept of transparency.
While the board sits in silence, hundreds of thousands of
people in the Nuba Mountains go without food and face daily bombings by
the government of Sudan
Shame on you, Mr.
Obama.
SAMUEL TOTTEN IS PROFESSOR EMERITUS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS ,
FAYETTEVILLE NUBA MOUNTAINS , SUDAN
Opinion, Pages 11 on 06/16/2013
OBAMA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
By David Swanson
Mon May 27, 2013 7:56 am (PDT) .
Posted by:
"Shelly Rockett",
Veterans for Peace
From: David Swanson <davidcnswanson@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, May 27, 2013 at 4:07 AM
Subject: An Endless "Peace Process" for Palestine
To: shelly@veteransforpeace.org
Cc: media@lists.mayfirst.org
An Endless "Peace Process" for Palestine By David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/content/endless-peace-process-palestine
The United States balances its endless war of terrorism with the
institution of an endless "peace process" for Palestine, a process valuable
for its peaceyness and interminability.
Date: Mon, May 27, 2013 at 4:07 AM
Subject: An Endless "Peace Process" for Palestine
To: shelly@veteransforpeace.org
Cc: media@lists.mayfirst.org
An Endless "Peace Process" for Palestine By David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/content/endless-peace-process-palestine
The United States balances its endless war of terrorism with the
institution of an endless "peace process" for Palestine, a process valuable
for its peaceyness and interminability.
Josh Ruebner's new book, *Shattered Hopes: The Failure of Obama's Middle East Peace Process,<http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Hopes-Obamas-Failure-Israeli-Palestinian/dp/1781681201>
* could just as easily have been called "Fulfilled Expectations: The
Success of Obama's Middle East Peace Process," depending on one's
perspective. Its story could be summarized: Obama's performance in this
area has been of a piece with his performance in every other. Some people
became very hopeful about his rhetoric and then very dejected about his
actions.
In this case, among those getting hopeful were Palestinian negotiators.
But they didn't just grow depressed and despondent. They felt no
obligation to behave like Democratic voters. They swore off the Hopium and
went to work on an international approach through the United Nations that
has begun to pay off.
Obama began his "peace process" efforts "naively unprepared for the
intensity of the pushback from
States
evidence of Obama's mental state is hard to pin down, and I'm not sure of
the relevance. Whether Obama began with naive good intentions or the same
cynicism that he was, by all accounts, fully immersed in by his second or
third year in office, the important point remains the same. As Ruebner
explains, Obama employs an all-carrots / no-sticks approach with
that is doomed to failure.
In fact, suggesting that the White House cease providing
more weaponry and/or cease providing
justice following its crimes is liable to get Ruebner himself denounced as
naive, along with the rest of us who think he's right. Obama's fundamental
problem is not one of naiveté, but of "seriousness," of upholding the
solemn seriousness of willful belief in a respectable but doomed approach.
If Obama was surprised that Palestinian negotiators didn't play along with
this the way
the official point of view. Whether that is naiveté or deep cynicism may
be in the eye of the beholder.
Ruebner provides the chronological play-by-play from Obama's first happy
shiny moves in office to his familiar flailing about in search of
propaganda that would continue to hold up year after year. And Ruebner
includes analysis of what activists were up to along the way.
In fact, Ruebner begins with Obama's campaign promises, which -- upon close
inspection -- prove, as with every other issue, to have been much closer to
the President's abysmal performance than to the glowing image people recall
of his early hope-and-changey self. Obama campaigned placing all blame on
Palestinians, supporting
resolutions and legislation in the Senate imposing sanctions on
Palestinians as punishment for having held an open election, and supporting
website made his position clear to those inclined to see it. Boycott
campaigns against the Israeli government were, according to him, "bigoted."
As with every other area, on peace in
approach could also have been read clearly from his selection of
individuals to run his foreign policy team. During the transition period
prior to his inauguration, Obama took positions on many foreign policy
matters, but when it came to the ongoing Israeli assault on
declared himself unable to speak prior to becoming president.
Watching the sequence of events play out post-inauguration is painful.
Obama urges an end to
suggests that Obama, with all due respect, stick his proposals where the
sun don't shine. But Netanyahu backs "statehood" (someday, with no rights
or power or independence or actual -- you know -- *statehood*) for
Palestinians, but proceeds to rapidly expand settlements, effectively
eliminating territory on which to create any state. Obama announces that
victory has come and help is on the way!
Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave up on freezing
settlements and announced that slowing the pace of the expansion would be
an "unprecedented" accomplishment -- a claim that was less credible to
people who had lived and suffered through many such claims before. As
reward for the same lawless abuses as always,
Obama administration more weaponry than ever, and a veto of a resolution at
the United Nations opposing more Israeli settlements.
Ruebner rightly concludes:
"Obama's failure to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace resulted not only
from his unwillingness to go to the mat with the Israel lobby over the
issue of fully freezing Israeli settlements, not only from the scattershot,
frenetic lurching of his policy initiatives thereafter. Obama also
foundered because his approach relied solely on providing
carrots. With the trivial exceptions of denying Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu photo-ops at the White House on a few occasions and
reportedly forcing him to wait for several hours before a meeting, Obama
never brandished the proverbial stick. But these personal insults did
nothing to create incentives for
defying
Hope is so much more popular than reality. But Ruebner is full of hope.
He holds it out there in front of us. All that's required is a little
actually useful action:
"[I]f the United States were to pull its backing for Israel's oppression of
the Palestinians, then Israeli intransigence would melt away in the
historical blink of an eye, as it did when President Dwight Eisenhower
terminated all U.S. aid programs to Israel after it invaded and occupied
the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula in 1956."
How do we get there? Part of the answer, Ruebner persuasively
suggests<http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Hopes-Obamas-Failure-Israeli-Palestinian/dp/1781681201>is
Boycott-Divestment-and-Sanctions (BDS), a movement that is making
great strides, including in changing the public discourse, altering the sorts of
things that even U.S. politicians can get away with claiming with a
straight face.
TWO ON REVOKING OBAMA’S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
 Op-Ed,
NationofChange, April 3, 2013: The Nobel Peace Prize
that President Obama received 40 months ago has emerged as the most appalling Orwellian award of
this century. No, war is not peace. But humor is of the gallows sort when
we consider the absurdity and tragedy of the world’s most important peace
prize honoring the world’s top war maker. This week, a challenge has begun
with the launch of a petition urging the Norwegian Nobel Committee to revoke
Obama’s Peace Prize. By midnight of the first day, nearly 10,000 people had
signed.
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Clarity Press
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THE ILLEGAL
edited by CYNTHIA McKINNEY A DIGNITY PROJECT $19.95 2012 314 pp. |
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an independent publisher on global
issues and alternatives
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1.
2.
OBAMA’S ILLEGAL WAR VS. LIBYA
3.
Obama's Illegal War in Libya - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/opinion/21Ackerman.html
Jun 20, 2011 – The legal acrobatics
President Obama has used to justify war without Congressional
consent set a dangerous precedent.
4.
The US must end its illegal war in Libya now | Dennis Kucinich ...
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/.../libya-nato1
Jul 6, 2011 – Dennis Kucinich:
President Obama has ripped up the US
5.
THE ILLEGAL WAR ON LIBYA edited by Cynthia McKinney
www.claritypress.com/McKinney.html
This volume offers
both analysis and eyewitness accounts of the NATO assault on a helpless
civilian population it had a UN mandate to protect, and the massive ...
THREE ON DRONES
DRONE KILLINGS IN YEMEN
MOYERS AND CO. FEB. 10, 2013. Recounts a NYT story of a
drone attack that killed several al-Qaeda members in Yemen
Elizabeth
Monbiot.com
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Posted: 17 Dec 2012 11:44 AM PST
Some dead children are mourned; others are dehumanised.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 17th December 2012
“Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal
your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must
change.”(1) Every parent can connect with what Barack
Obama said about the murder of 20 children in
It must follow that
what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also
applies to the children murdered in
If the victims of Mr Obama’s drone strikes are mentioned by the state
at all, they are discussed in terms which suggest that they are less than
human. The people who operate the drones, Rolling Stone magazine reports,
describe their casualties as “bug splats”, “since viewing the body through a
grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.”(2) Or
they are reduced to vegetation: justifying the drone war, Obama’s
counterterrorism adviser Bruce Riedel explained that “you’ve got to mow the
lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow
back.”(3)
Like Bush’s government in
The wider effects on the children of the region have been
devastating. Many have been withdrawn from school because of fears that
large gatherings of any kind are being targeted. There have been several
strikes on schools since George W Bush launched the drone programme that
Obama has expanded so enthusiastically: one of Bush’s blunders killed 69
children(5).
The study reports that children scream in terror when they hear the
sound of a drone. A local psychologist says that their fear and the horrors
they witness is causing permanent mental scarring. Children wounded in drone
attacks told the researchers that they are too traumatised to go back to
school and have abandoned hopes of the careers they might have had: their
dreams as well as their bodies have been broken(6).
Obama does not kill children deliberately. But their deaths are an
inevitable outcome of the way his drones are deployed. We don’t know what
emotional effect these deaths might have on him, as neither he nor his
officials will discuss the matter: almost everything to do with the CIA’s
extrajudicial killings in
Two days before the murders in
Yes, he conceded, there is occasionally a little “collateral damage”,
but the
The “signature strike” doctrine developed under Obama, which has no
discernable basis in law, merely looks for patterns(10). A pattern could
consist of a party of unknown men carrying guns (which scarcely
distinguishes them from the rest of the male population of north-west
Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing
about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and
vague response during a videoconference last January(12). The killings have
been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe
Klein claimed on MSNBC that “the bottom line in the end is whose 4 year-old
get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4 year-olds
here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”(13) As the estimable
Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing 4 year-olds is what terrorists
do(14). It doesn’t prevent retaliatory murders; it encourages them, as grief
and revenge are often accomplices.
Most of the world’s media, which has rightly commemorated the
children of
“Are we,” Obama asked on Sunday, “prepared to say that such violence
visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of
our freedom?”(15) It’s a valid question. He should apply it to the violence
he is visiting on the children of
References:
2. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-rise-of-the-killer-drones-how-america-goes-to-war-in-secret-20120416
3. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-23/world/35500278_1_drone-campaign-obama-administration-matrix
4. International Human Rights and
Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic
at NYU School Of Law, September 2012. Living Under
Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in
6. International Human Rights and
Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic
at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.
7. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/12/12/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-12122012
8. John Brennan, 30th April 2012. The
Ethics and Efficacy of the President’s Counterterrorism Strategy. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-efficacy-and-ethics-us-counterterrorism-strategy
9. John Brennan, as above.
10. International Human Rights and
Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic
at NYU School Of Law, September 2012, as above.
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ARTICLE OBAMA’S WAR OF
TERROR BY ANDREW GAVIN MARSHALL
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Empire Under Obama: Barack
Obama's Global Terror Campaign Under the administration of By Andrew Gavin October 14, 2013 "Information Clearing House - When Obama became President in 2009, he faced a monumental challenge for the extension of American and Western imperial interests. The effects of eight years under the overt ruthless and reckless behaviour of the Bush administration had taken a toll on the world. With two massive ground wars and occupations under way in When it came to the 'War on Terror,' Obama implemented his electoral visions of "hope" and "change" in the only way he knows: change the rhetoric, not the substance, and hope to hell that the Empire can continue extending its influence around the world. As such, Obama quickly implemented a policy change, dropping the term "war on terror" and replacing it with the equally - if not more - meaningless term, "overseas contingency operations."[2] A major facet of Obama's foreign policy strategy has been the implementation of an unprecedented global terror war with flying killer robots ("drones") operated by remote control. By 2011, the Washington Post reported that no president in Every Tuesday, a counterterrorism meeting takes place in the White House Situation Room among two dozen security officials where they decide who - around the world - they are going to illegally bomb and kill that week, drawing up the weekly "kill list" (as it is called).[4] By October of 2012, Obama's "kill list" had evolved into a "next-generation targeting list" now officially referred to as the "disposition matrix," in yet another effort to demean the English language.[5] The "disposition matrix"/kill list establishes the names of "terror suspects" who the Obama administration wants to 'dispose' of, without trial, beyond the rule of law, in contravention of all established international law, and in blatant war crimes that kill innocent civilians. Obama administration officials believe that the use of global drone terror warfare and "kill lists" are likely to last at least another decade, with one top official commenting, "We can't possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us... It's a necessary part of what we do... We're not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, 'We love But the Obama administration warned the world that as of 2012, the U.S. had only reached the "mid-point" in the global war on [read: of] terror, with Obama's assassination program having already killed more than 3,000 people around the world, more than the number of people killed on 9/11.[7] As Glenn Greenwald noted, this represented "concerted efforts by the Obama administration to fully institutionalize - to make officially permanent - the most extremist powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror."[8] But in case you had any moral 'qualms' about bombing and murdering hundreds of innocent children in multiple countries around the world with flying robots, don't worry: as Joe Klein of Time Magazine noted, "the bottom line in the end is - whose 4-year-old gets killed? What we're doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror."[9] Quite right. After all, "indiscriminate acts of terror" are only okay when the A major NYU School of Law and This is referred to as a "double-tap" strategy, and according to the FBI and Homeland Security, this is a tactic which is regularly used in "terrorist attacks" to target "first responders as well as the general population." Obama's drones not only target rescuers, but also frequently bomb the funerals of previous drone victims. According to the United Nations, such tactics "are a war crime."[11] Even the NYU/Stanford Law School report identified the drone program as a terror campaign when it noted that the effects of the drone program are that it "terrorizes men, women, and children."[12] John O. Brennan, who served as Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser (and is now the director of the CIA), was the main advocate of the drone program inside the Obama administration. In 2011, he reassured the American people that, "in the last year, there hasn't been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, [and] precision of the capabilities that we've been able to develop," and added that, "if there are terrorists who are within an area where there are women and children or others, you know, we do not take such action that might put those innocent men, women and children in danger."[13] That sounds pretty impressive, though unfortunately, it's an absurd lie. The New York Times noted that Obama's method for counting civilian deaths caused by drone strikes was "disputed" (to say the least), because it "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants," thus radically underreporting the level of civilian deaths. The "logic" of this view that that "people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good." This "counting method," noted the NYT, "may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths." Some administration officials outside the CIA have complained about this method, referring to it as "guilty by association" which results in "deceptive" estimates. One official commented, "It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants... They count the corpses and they're not really sure who they are."[14] In 2011, it was reported that drone strikes in Pakistan had killed 168 children, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.[15] In Afghanistan, officials note that civilians are killed not only by Taliban attacks but also increasingly by drone attacks, with Afghan president Hamid Karzai condemning the attacks which kill women and children as being "against all international norms."[16] Afghanistan was in fact the epicenter of the U.S. drone war, even more so than Pakistan, with the CIA having launched upwards of 333 drone strikes in the country over the course of 2012, the highest total ever.[17] The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has evolved into "a new and as yet only partially understood doctrine of secret, unaccountable and illegal warfare," which is "destroying the West's reputation," noted the Telegraph in 2012.[18] And considering the already-existing "reputation" of the West in the rest of the world, that's quite an impressive feat. From 2004 to 2012, between 2,400 and 3,100 people were reported to have been killed by The UN warned in June of 2012 that drone strikes may constitute "war crimes," and that the use of drone strikes and "targeted killings" has been found to be "immensely attractive" to other states in the world, and thus, such practices "weaken the rule of law," as they "fall outside the scope of accountability." A Pakistani Ambassador declared that, "We find the use of drones to be totally counterproductive in terms of succeeding in the war against terror. It leads to greater levels of terror rather than reducing them." Ian Seiderman, the director of the International Commission of Jurists noted that as a result of the global drone war, "immense damage was being done to the fabric of international law."[20] Robert Grenier, former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006, commented that the United States was "creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield," adding that, "If you strike them indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount of popular anger," and that the strikes could even create "terrorist safe havens."[21] In testimony before the U.S. Congress in April of 2013, a Yemeni man who had studied in the United States explained that his community in Yemen - a small village - knew about the United States primarily through stories of his own experiences living there (which were positive), but their positive association with America changed following U.S. drone strikes, commenting: "Now... when they think of America, they think of the fear they feel at the drones over their heads. What the violent militants had failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in an instant."[22] In February of 2013, the United States sent 100 U.S. troops to Mali to set up a drone base for operations in Western Africa.[26] The U.S. began operating drones out of Mali right away, as "north and west Africa [were] rapidly emerging as yet another front in the long-running US war against terrorist networks," giving the Pentagon "a strategic foothold in West Africa," with Niger bordering Mali, Nigeria and Libya, which was already the target of a French-British-American war in 2011.[27] In September of 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American "suspected terrorist" in Yemen had his name added to Obama's "kill list" and was murdered in a drone bombing, with Obama reportedly saying that making the decision to kill him was "an easy one."[28] Two weeks later, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of Anwar, also born in At his first inaugural address as President in 2009, Barack Obama said: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect." Less than two-and-a-half years later, favourable views of the A June 2012 poll of public opinion sought to gauge the level of support for U.S. drone strikes among 20 countries: the U.S., Britain, Germany, Poland, France, India, Italy, Czech Republic, China, Lebanon, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Russia, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Greece. The poll found that 17 of the countries had a "clear majority" opposed to drone strikes, while only the In May of 2013, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee where he was asked how long the 'war on terrorism' will last, to which he replied: "At least 10 to 20 years," with a Pentagon spokesperson later clarifying that he meant that, "the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today - atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted."[32] In other words, according to the Pentagon, the world has at least one-to-two more decades of So, if Akbar Ahmed, the Islamic Studies chair at American University and former Pakistani high commissioner to Britain, explained in a May 2013 op-ed in the New York Times that the drone war in Pakistan was producing "chaos and rage" as it was "destroying already weak tribal structures and throwing communities into disarray," threatening the Pakistani government and fueling hatred of America, and that this was also occurring in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, other major target nations of Obama's terror campaign.[33] Many of these tribal societies had struggled for autonomy under colonial governments (usually run by the British), and then struggled against the central governments left by the British and other colonial powers. These tribal societies have subsequently come under attack by the Taliban and al-Qaeda (whose growth was developed by the US in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani state), and then they continued to suffer under foreign occupations led by the United States, Britain and other NATO powers in Afghanistan and Iraq, destabilizing the entire Middle East and Central Asia.[34] Now, these tribal societies are being subjected to Obama's drone campaign of terror, "causing ferocious backlashes against central governments while destroying any positive image of the So why would the For the American 'Mafia Godfather' Empire, control must be established, through whatever means necessary. For, as the 'Mafia Principles' of international relations dictate: if one state, region, or people are able to "successfully defy" the Godfather/Empire, then other states and people might try to do the same. This could potentially set off a "domino effect" in which the Meanwhile, the technological capacity of American military force has reached new heights, with the global drone warfare as a major example. It allows the Thus, we attempt a logical reasoning as to why the When it comes to Obama's drone terror campaign against stateless tribal societies, the political language is firmly rooted in the "war on terror." These people are deemed to be "terror suspects," and so they are bombed and killed, their families and communities terrorized, and as a result, they become increasingly resentful and hateful toward the United States, thus leading to increased recruitment into terrorist organizations and an increased terror threat to the United States itself. Thus, the policy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: in terrorizing and bombing impoverished, stateless, tribal societies in the name of "fighting terror," the Some may find my use of the term "terror campaign" to refer to Obama's drone program as hyperbolic or emotive. But what else are we supposed to call a program that produces "chaos and rage" around the world, creating "more enemies than we are removing" as it "terrorizes men, women and children," so that when people think of America, "they think of the fear they feel at the drones over their heads"? What do you call this when it has been launched against at least seven different countries in the past four years, killing thousands of people - including hundreds of innocent children - and targeting first responders, humanitarian workers, and funerals? By definition, this is terrorism. Obama's global flying-killer-robot-campaign is the implementation of the most technologically advanced terror campaign in history. The fact that Obama's terror war can continue holding any public support - let alone amajority of public support - is simply evidence of a public with little knowledge of the reality of the campaign, or the terror being inflicted upon people all over the world in their name. If the objective of As Obama sought to justify his global terror campaign, he claimed that it has "saved lives" (except, presumably, for the thousands of lives it has claimed), that " So the question for Americans then, should be this: do you want to live in a nation - and world - which is defined by the decision to wage a global campaign of terror upon multiple nations and regions, and tens of thousands of people around the world? Obama clearly has no problem with it, nor does the American foreign policy establishment, nor the media talking heads. But... do you? Andrew Gavin Marshall is a 26-year old researcher and writer based in Notes [1] Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US President," International Affairs, 85: 1, (2009), page 54. [2] Scott Wilson and Al Kamen, "'Global War On Terror' Is Given New Name," The http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR2009032402818.html [3] Greg Miller, "Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing," The Washington Post, 27 December 2011: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-12-27/national/35285416_1_drone-program-drone-campaign-lethal-operations [4] Jo Becker and Scott Shane, "Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will," The New York Times, 29 May 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all [5] Greg Miller, "Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding names to kill lists," The Washington Post, 23 October 2012: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/plan-for-hunting-terrorists-signals-us-intends-to-keep-adding-names-to-kill-lists/2012/10/23/4789b2ae-18b3-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid. [8] Glenn Greenwald, "Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent," The Guardian, 24 October 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list [9] Glenn Greenwald, "Joe Klein's sociopathic defense of drone killings of children," The Guardian, 23 October 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe?guni=Article:in%20body%20link [10] Glenn Greenwald, "New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from Obama's drones," The Guardian, 25 September 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/25/study-obama-drone-deaths [11] Glenn Greenwald, " http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-drones-strikes-target-rescuers-pakistan?guni=Article:in%20body%20link [12] Glenn Greenwald, "New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from Obama's drones," The Guardian, 25 September 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/25/study-obama-drone-deaths [13] Glenn Greenwald, "New study proves falsity of John Brennan's drone claims," Salon, 19 July 2011: http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/drones/ [14] Jo Becker and Scott Shane, "Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will," The New York Times, 29 May 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all [15] Rob Crilly, "168 children killed in drone strikes in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8695679/168-children-killed-in-drone-strikes-in-Pakistan-since-start-of-campaign.html [16] Azam Ahmed, "Drone and Taliban Attacks Hit Civilians, Afghans Say," 8 September 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/world/asia/two-deadly-attacks-in-afghanistan.html [17] Noah Shachtman, "Military Stats Reveal Epicenter of http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/drones-afghan-air-war/ [18] Peter Osborne, "It may seem painless, but drone war in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9300187/It-may-seem-painless-but-drone-war-in-Afghanistan-is-destroying-the-Wests-reputation.html [19] Seumas Milne, " http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/29/americas-drone-campaign-terror [20] Owen Bowcott, "Drone strikes threaten 50 years of international law, says UN rapporteur," The Guardian, 21 June 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/21/drone-strikes-international-law-un [21] Paul Harris, "Drone attacks create terrorist safe havens, warns former CIA official," The Guardian, 5 June 2012: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/05/al-qaida-drone-attacks-too-broad [22] Charlie Savage, "Drone Strikes Turn Allies Into Enemies, Yemeni Says," The New York Times, 23 April 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/world/middleeast/judiciary-panel-hears-testimony-on-use-of-drones.html [23] Elspeth Reeve, "The Scope of http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/02/world-war-drone-map/61873/ [24] Akbar Ahmed and Frankie Martin, "Deadly Drone Strike on Muslims in the http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/03/05-drones-philippines-ahmed [25] Raf Sanchez, " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9582612/US-to-deploy-drones-to-launch-air-strikes-against-al-Qaeda-in-Mali.html [26] Craig Whitlock, " http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-22/world/37233792_1_drone-base-drone-flights-qaeda [27] Craig Whitlock, "Drone warfare: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/26/niger-africa-drones-us-terror [28] Jo Becker and Scott Shane, "Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will," The New York Times, 29 May 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all [29] Conor Friedersdorf, "How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old American," The http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/ [30] Glenn Greenwald, "Obama, the http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/15/us-obama-muslims-animosity-deepens [31] Glenn Greenwald, "Obama, the http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/15/us-obama-muslims-animosity-deepens [32] Glenn Greenwald, " http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/17/endless-war-on-terror-obama [33] Akbar Ahmed, "The Drone War Is Far From Over," The New York Times, 30 may 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/opinion/the-drone-war-is-far-from-over.html [34] Ibid. [35] Ibid. [36] Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US President," International Affairs, 85: 1, (2009), page 54. [37] Barack Obama, "As Delivered: Obama's Speech on Terrorism," The Wall Street Journal's http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/05/23/prepared-text-obamas-speech-on-terrorism/ What's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments
|
ANDREW GAVIN
MARSHALL
SEE THE WORLD
THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS
Empire
Under Obama, Part 2: Barack Obama’s Global Terror Campaign
By:
Andrew Gavin Marshall
Originally
posted at The Hampton
Institute
Under the
administration of Barack Obama ,
America
When Obama became
President in 2009, he faced a monumental challenge for the extension of
American and Western imperial interests. The effects of eight years under the
overt ruthless and reckless behaviour of the Bush administration had taken a
toll on the world. With two massive ground wars and occupations under way in Iraq and Afghanistan
When it came to the
‘War on Terror,’ Obama implemented his electoral visions of “hope” and
“change” in the only way he knows: change the rhetoric, not the substance, and hope to hell that the Empire can continue
extending its influence around the world. As such, Obama quickly implemented a
policy change, dropping the term “war on terror” and replacing it with the
equally – if not more – meaningless term, “overseas contingency
operations.”[2]
A major facet of
Obama’s foreign policy strategy has been the implementation of an
unprecedented global terror war with flying killer robots (“drones”) operated
by remote control. By 2011, the Washington Post reported that no president in U.S.
Every Tuesday, a
counterterrorism meeting takes place in the White House Situation Room among
two dozen security officials where they decide who – around the world – they
are going to illegally bomb and kill that week, drawing up the weekly “kill
list” (as it is called).[4]
By October of 2012,
Obama’s “kill list” had evolved into a “next-generation targeting list” now
officially referred to as the “disposition matrix,” in yet another effort to
demean the English language.[5] The “disposition matrix”/kill list establishes
the names of “terror suspects” who the Obama administration wants to ‘dispose’
of, without trial, beyond the rule of law, in contravention of all established
international law, and in blatant war crimes that kill innocent civilians.
Obama administration
officials believe that the use of global drone terror warfare and “kill lists”
are likely to last at least another decade, with one top official commenting,
“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us… It’s a necessary part
of what we do… We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody
holding hands and saying, ‘We love America
But the Obama
administration warned the world that as of 2012, the U.S. had only reached the
“mid-point” in the global war on [read: of] terror, with Obama’s
assassination program having already killed more than 3,000 people around the
world, more than the number of people killed on 9/11.[7] As Glenn Greenwald
noted, this represented “concerted efforts by the Obama administration to
fully institutionalize – to make officially permanent – the most extremist
powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror.”[8]
But in case you had any
moral ‘qualms’ about bombing and murdering hundreds of innocent children in
multiple countries around the world with flying robots, don’t worry: as Joe
Klein of Time Magazine noted, “the bottom line in the end is
– whose 4-year-old gets killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility
that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”[9]
Quite right. After all,
“indiscriminate acts of terror” are only okay when the United States U.S. United States U.S.
declares a war “on” something (drugs, poverty, terror), the result is that
there is a great deal more of whatever it is being ‘targeted’, and that U.S.
A major NYU School of
Law and Stanford
University Law
School US
This is referred to as
a “double-tap” strategy, and according to the FBI and Homeland Security, this
is a tactic which is regularly used in “terrorist attacks” to target “first
responders as well as the general population.” Obama’s drones not only target
rescuers, but also frequently bomb the funerals of previous drone victims.
According to the United Nations, such tactics “are a war crime.”[11] Even the
NYU/Stanford Law School report identified the drone program as a terror
campaign when it noted that the effects of the drone program are that it
“terrorizes men, women, and children.”[12]
John O. Brennan, who
served as Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser (and is now the director of
the CIA), was the main advocate of the drone program inside the Obama
administration. In 2011, he reassured the American people that, “in the last
year, there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional
proficiency, [and] precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to
develop,” and added that, “if there are terrorists who are within an area
where there are women and children or others, you know, we do not take such
action that might put those innocent men, women and children in danger.”[13]
That sounds pretty impressive, though unfortunately, it’s an absurd lie.
The New
York Times noted
that Obama’s method for counting civilian deaths caused by drone strikes was
“disputed” (to say the least), because it “counts all military-age males in a
strike zone as combatants,” thus radically underreporting the level of
civilian deaths. The “logic” of this view that that “people in an area of
known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up
to no good.” This “counting method,” noted the NYT,
“may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral
deaths.” Some administration officials outside the CIA have complained about
this method, referring to it as “guilty by association” which results in
“deceptive” estimates. One official commented, “It bothers me when they say
there were seven guys, so they must all be militants… They count the corpses
and they’re not really sure who they are.”[14]
In 2011, it was
reported that drone strikes in Pakistan had killed 168 children, according to
the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.[15] In Afghanistan, officials note
that civilians are killed not only by Taliban attacks but also increasingly by
drone attacks, with Afghan president Hamid Karzai condemning the attacks which
kill women and children as being “against all international norms.”[16]
Afghanistan was in fact the epicenter of the U.S. drone war, even more so than
Pakistan, with the CIA having launched upwards of 333 drone strikes in the
country over the course of 2012, the highest total ever.[17] The U.S. strategy
in Afghanistan has evolved into “a new and as yet only partially understood
doctrine of secret, unaccountable and illegal warfare,” which is “destroying
the West’s reputation,” noted the Telegraph in 2012.[18] And considering the
already-existing “reputation” of the West in the rest of the world, that’s
quite an impressive feat.
From 2004 to 2012,
between 2,400 and 3,100 people were reported to have been killed by U.S.
The UN warned in June
of 2012 that drone strikes may constitute “war crimes,” and that the use of
drone strikes and “targeted killings” has been found to be “immensely
attractive” to other states in the world, and thus, such practices “weaken the
rule of law,” as they “fall outside the scope of accountability.” A Pakistani
Ambassador declared that, “We find the use of drones to be totally
counterproductive in terms of succeeding in the war against terror. It leads
to greater levels of terror rather than reducing them.” Ian Seiderman, the
director of the International Commission of Jurists noted that as a result of
the global drone war, “immense damage was being done to the fabric of
international law.”[20]
Robert Grenier, former
head of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006, commented that
the United States was “creating a situation where we are creating more enemies
than we are removing from the battlefield,” adding that, “If you strike them
indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount of
popular anger,” and that the strikes could even create “terrorist safe
havens.”[21]
In testimony before the
U.S. Congress in April of 2013, a Yemeni man who had studied in the United
States explained that his community in Yemen – a small village – knew about
the United States primarily through stories of his own experiences living
there (which were positive), but their positive association with America
changed following U.S. drone strikes, commenting: “Now… when they think of
America, they think of the fear they feel at the drones over their heads. What
the violent militants had failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in
an instant.”[22]
In February of 2013,
the United States sent 100 U.S. troops to Mali to set up a drone base for
operations in Western Africa.[26] The U.S. began operating drones out of Mali
right away, as “north and west Africa [were] rapidly emerging as yet another
front in the long-running US war against terrorist networks,” giving the
Pentagon “a strategic foothold in West Africa,” with Niger bordering Mali,
Nigeria and Libya, which was already the target of a French-British-American
war in 2011.[27]
In September of 2011,
Anwar al-Awlaki, an American “suspected terrorist” in Yemen had his name added
to Obama’s “kill list” and was murdered in a drone bombing, with Obama
reportedly saying that making the decision to kill him was “an easy one.”[28]
Two weeks later, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of Anwar, also
born in America but at the
time living in Yemen America
At his first inaugural
address as President in 2009, Barack Obama said: “To the Muslim world, we seek
a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” Less than
two-and-a-half years later, favourable views of the United
States in the Middle East
had “plummeted… to levels lower than they were during the last year of the
Bush administration.” A 2013 Gallup poll found
that 92% of Pakistanis disapproved of U.S. U.S.
A June 2012 poll of
public opinion sought to gauge the level of support for U.S. drone strikes
among 20 countries: the U.S., Britain, Germany, Poland, France, India, Italy,
Czech Republic, China, Lebanon, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Russia, Tunisia,
Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Greece. The poll found that 17 of the countries had
a “clear majority” opposed to drone strikes, while only the U.S.
In May of 2013, Michael
Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and
low-intensity conflict testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee
where he was asked how long the ‘war on terrorism’ will last, to which he
replied: “At least 10 to 20 years,” with a Pentagon spokesperson later
clarifying that he meant that, “the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more
years from today – atop the 12 years that the conflict has already
lasted.”[32] In other words, according to the Pentagon, the world has at least
one-to-two more decades of America
So, if America America America
Akbar Ahmed, the
Islamic Studies chair at American University and former Pakistani high
commissioner to Britain, explained in a May 2013 op-ed in the New
York Times that the
drone war in Pakistan was producing “chaos and rage” as it was “destroying
already weak tribal structures and throwing communities into disarray,”
threatening the Pakistani government and fueling hatred of America, and that
this was also occurring in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, other major target
nations of Obama’s terror campaign.[33]
Many of these tribal
societies had struggled for autonomy under colonial governments (usually run
by the British), and then struggled against the central governments left by
the British and other colonial powers. These tribal societies have
subsequently come under attack by the Taliban and al-Qaeda (whose growth was
developed by the US in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani state),
and then they continued to suffer under foreign occupations led by the United
States, Britain and other NATO powers in Afghanistan and Iraq, destabilizing
the entire Middle East and Central Asia.[34]
Now, these tribal
societies are being subjected to Obama’s drone campaign of terror, “causing
ferocious backlashes against central governments while destroying any positive
image of the United States
So why would the United States U.S.
For the American ‘Mafia
Godfather’ Empire, control must be established, through whatever
means necessary. For, as the ‘Mafia
Principles’ of international
relations dictate: if one state, region, or people are able to “successfully
defy” the Godfather/Empire, then other states and people might try to do the
same. This could potentially set off a “domino effect” in which the U.S.
Meanwhile, the
technological capacity of American military force has reached new heights,
with the global drone warfare as a major example. It allows the U.S.
Thus, we attempt a
logical reasoning as to why the U.S.
When it comes to
Obama’s drone terror campaign against stateless tribal societies, the
political language is firmly rooted in the “war on terror.” These people are
deemed to be “terror suspects,” and so they are bombed and killed, their
families and communities terrorized, and as a result, they become increasingly
resentful and hateful toward the United States, thus leading to increased
recruitment into terrorist organizations and an increased terror threat to the
United States itself. Thus, the policy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: in
terrorizing and bombing impoverished, stateless, tribal societies in the name
of “fighting terror,” the U.S.
Some may find my use of
the term “terror campaign” to refer to Obama’s drone program as hyperbolic or
emotive. But what else are we supposed to call a program that produces “chaos
and rage” around the world, creating “more enemies than we are removing” as it
“terrorizes men, women and children,” so that when people think of America,
“they think of the fear they feel at the drones over their heads”? What do you
call this when it has been launched against at least seven different countries
in the past four years, killing thousands of people – including hundreds of
innocent children – and targeting first responders, humanitarian workers, and
funerals?
By definition, this is
terrorism. Obama’s global flying-killer-robot-campaign is the implementation
of the most technologically advanced terror campaign in history. The fact that
Obama’s terror war can continue holding anypublic support – let alone a majority of public support – is simply
evidence of a public with little knowledge of the reality of the campaign, or
the terror being inflicted upon people all over the world in their name.
If the objective of U.S. policies were to counter or reduce the
threat of terror, one would think that the U.S.
As Obama sought to
justify his global terror campaign, he claimed that it has “saved lives”
(except, presumably, for the thousands of lives it has claimed), that “America
So the question for
Americans then, should be this: do you want to live in a nation – and world –
which is defined by the decision to wage a
global campaign of terror upon multiple nations and regions, and tens of
thousands of people around the world? Obama clearly has no problem with it,
nor does the American foreign policy establishment, nor the media talking
heads. But… do you?
Andrew Gavin Marshall
is a 26-year old researcher and writer based in Montreal , Canada
Notes
[1]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US
President,” International Affairs, 85: 1, (2009), page 54.
[2]
Scott Wilson and Al Kamen, “‘Global War On Terror’ Is Given New Name,” The Washington
[3]
Greg Miller, “Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing,”
The Washington Post, 27 December 2011:
[4] Jo
Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s
Principles and Will,” The New York Times, 29 May 2012:
[5]
Greg Miller, “Plan for hunting terrorists signals U.S. intends to keep adding
names to kill lists,” The Washington Post, 23 October 2012:
[6]
Ibid.
[7]
Ibid.
[8]
Glenn Greenwald, “Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent,” The
Guardian, 24 October 2012:
[9]
Glenn Greenwald, “Joe Klein’s sociopathic defense of drone killings of
children,” The Guardian, 23 October 2012:
[10]
Glenn Greenwald, “New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from
Obama’s drones,” The Guardian, 25 September 2012:
[11]
Glenn Greenwald, “US drone
strikes target rescuers in Pakistan
[12]
Glenn Greenwald, “New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from
Obama’s drones,” The Guardian, 25 September 2012:
[13]
Glenn Greenwald, “New study proves falsity of John Brennan’s drone claims,”
Salon, 19 July 2011:
[14]
Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s
Principles and Will,” The New York Times, 29 May 2012:
[15]
Rob Crilly, “168 children killed in drone strikes in Pakistan
[16]
Azam Ahmed, “Drone and Taliban Attacks Hit Civilians, Afghans Say,” 8
September 2013:
[17]
Noah Shachtman, “Military Stats Reveal Epicenter of U.S.
[18]
Peter Osborne, “It may seem painless, but drone war in Afghanistan
[19]
Seumas Milne, “America
[20]
Owen Bowcott, “Drone strikes threaten 50 years of international law, says UN
rapporteur,” The Guardian, 21 June 2012:
[21]
Paul Harris, “Drone attacks create terrorist safe havens, warns former CIA
official,” The Guardian, 5 June 2012:
[22]
Charlie Savage, “Drone Strikes Turn Allies Into Enemies, Yemeni Says,” The New
York Times, 23 April 2013:
[23]
Elspeth Reeve, “The Scope of America’s World War Drone,” The Atlantic Wire, 6
February 2013:
[24]
Akbar Ahmed and Frankie Martin, “Deadly Drone Strike on Muslims in the Southern Philippines ,” 5 March 2012:
[25]
Raf Sanchez, “US ‘to deploy
drones to launch air strikes against al-Qaeda in Mali
[26]
Craig Whitlock, “U.S.
troops arrive in Niger
[27]
Craig Whitlock, “Drone warfare: Niger
becomes latest frontline in US
[28]
Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s
Principles and Will,” The New York Times, 29 May 2012:
[29]
Conor Friedersdorf, “How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old
American,” The Atlantic , 24 October 2012:
[30]
Glenn Greenwald, “Obama, the US
[31]
Glenn Greenwald, “Obama, the US
[32]
Glenn Greenwald, “Washington
[33]
Akbar Ahmed, “The Drone War Is Far From Over,” The New York Times, 30 may
2013:
[34]
Ibid.
[35]
Ibid.
[36]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Major Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next US
President,” International Affairs, 85: 1, (2009), page 54.
[37]
Barack Obama, “As Delivered: Obama’s Speech on Terrorism,” The Wall Street Journal’s
Washington Wire, 23 May 2013:
Empire Under Obama,
Part 3: America
Andrew
Gavin Marshall I
Geopolitics I Policy & Research I October 17th, 2013
[I first encountered
Part 3 in Z Magazine (Dec.
2013). –Dick]
Obama's global terror campaign is not
only dependent upon his drone assassination program, but increasingly it has
come to rely upon the deployment of Special Operations forces in countries all
over the world, reportedly between 70 and 120 countries at any one time. As
Obama has sought to draw down the large-scale ground invasions of countries
(as Bush pursued in Afghanistan
and Iraq
JSOC was established in 1980 following
the failed rescue of American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran as "an obscure and secretive corner
of the military's hierarchy," noted the Atlantic .
It experienced a "rapid expansion" under the Bush administration,
and since Obama came to power, "appears to be playing an increasingly
prominent role in national security" and "counterterrorism," in
areas which were "traditionally covered by the CIA."[1] One of the
most important differences between these covert warfare operations being
conducted by JSOC instead of the CIA is that the CIA has to report to
Congress, whereas JSOC only reports its most important activities to the
President's National Security Council.[2]
During the Bush administration, JSOC
"reported directly" to Vice President Dick Cheney, according to
award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (of the New
Yorker), who explained that, "It's an executive assassination
ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on." He added:
"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not
talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a
list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all
of us."[3]
In 2005, Dick Cheney referred to U.S.
Special Forces as "the silent professionals" representing "the
kind of force we want to build for the future... a force that is lighter, more
adaptable, more agile, and more lethal in action." And without a hint of
irony, Cheney stated: "None of us wants to turn over the future of
mankind to tiny groups of fanatics committing indiscriminate murder and
plotting large-scale terror."[4] Not unless those "fanatics"
happen to be wearing U.S.
The commander of JSOC during the Bush administration
- when it served as Cheney's "executive assassination ring" - was
General Stanley McChrystal, whom Obama appointed as the top military commander
in Afghanistan
JSOC has also been involved in running
a "secret war" inside of Pakistan
Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, was
recruited as a CIA asset in 2004, and in subsequent years acquired over $1.5
billion in contracts from the Pentagon and CIA, and included among its
leadership several former top-level CIA officials. Blackwater, which primarily
hires former Special Forces soldiers, has largely functioned "as an
overseas Praetorian guard for the CIA and State Department officials,"
who were also "helping to craft, fund, and execute operations,"
including "assembling hit teams," all outside of any Congressional
or public oversight (since it was technically a private corporation).[8]
The CIA hired Blackwater to aid in a
secret assassination program which was hidden from Congress for seven
years.[9] These operations would be overseen by the CIA or Special Forces
personnel.[10] Blackwater has also been contracted to arm drones at secret
bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Obama's assassination program, overseen
by the CIA.[11] The lines dividing the military, the CIA and Blackwater had
become "blurred," as one former CIA official commented, "It
became a very brotherly relationship... There was a feeling that Blackwater
eventually become an extension of the agency."[12]
The "secret war" in Pakistan
Within the first five months of
Obama's presidency in 2009, he authorized "a massive expansion of
clandestine military and intelligence operations worldwide," granting the
Pentagon's regional combatant commanders "significant new authority"
over such covert operations.[14] The directive came from General Petraeus,
commander of CENTCOM, authorizing Special Forces soldiers to be sent into
"both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and
the Horn of Africa." The deployment of highly trained killers into dozens
of countries was to become "systemic and long term," designed to
"penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy" enemies of the State, beyond
the rule of law, no trial or pretenses of accountability. They also
"prepare the environment" for larger attacks that the U.S.
The new orders gave regional
commanders - such as Petraeus who headed CENTCOM, or General Ward of the
newly-created Africa Command (AFRICOM) - authority over special operations
forces in the area of their command, institutionalizing the authority to send
trained killers into dozens of countries around the world to conduct secret
operations with no oversight whatsoever; and this new 'authority' is given to
multiple top military officials, who have risen to the top of an institution
with absolutely no 'democratic' pretenses. Regardless of who is president,
this "authority" remains institutionalized in the "combatant
commands."[16]
The combatant commands include:
AFRICOM over Africa (est. 2007), CENTCOM over the Middle East and Central Asia
(est. 1983), EUCOM over Europe (est. 1947), NORTHCOM over North America (est.
2002), PACOM over the Pacific rim and Asia (est. 1947), SOUTHCOM over Central
and South America and the Caribbean (est. 1963), SOCOM as Special Operations
Command (est. 1987), STRATCOM as Strategic Command over military operations to
do with outer space, intelligence, and weapons (est. 1992), and TRANSCOM
handling all transportation for the Department of Defense. The State
Department was given "oversight" to clear the operations from each
embassy,[17] just to make sure everyone was 'in the loop,' unlike during the
Bush years when it was run out of Cheney's office without telling anyone else.
In 2010, it was reported by the Washington
Post that the U.S.
has expanded the operations of its Special Forces around the world, from being
deployed in roughly 60 countries under Bush to about 75 countries in 2010
under Obama, operating in notable spots such as the Philippines and Colombia,
as well as Yemen, across the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. The global
deployment of Special Forces - alongside the CIA's global drone warfare
program - were two facets of Obama's "national security doctrine of
global engagement and domestic values," in the words of the Washington
Post, though the article was unclear on which aspect of waging
"secret wars" in 75 countries constituted Obama's
"values." Commanders for Special Operations forces have become
"a far more regular presence at the White House" under Obama than
George Bush, with one such commander commenting, "We have a lot more
access... They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They
are willing to get aggressive much more quickly." Such Special Operations
forces deployments "go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training
of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them."[18]
So not only are U.S. forces conducting
secret wars within dozens of countries around the world, but they are training
the domestic military forces of many of these countries to undertake secret
wars internally, and in the interests of the United States Mafia empire.
One military official even "set
up a network" of private military corporations that hired former Special
Forces and CIA operations to gather intelligence and conduct secret operations
in foreign countries to support "lethal action": publicly
subsidized, privatized 'accountability.' Such a network was "generally
considered illegal" and was "improperly financed."[19] When the
news of these networks emerged, the Pentagon said it shut them down and opened
a "criminal investigation." Turns out, they found nothing
"criminal," because two months later, the operations were continuing
and had "become an important source of intelligence." The networks
of covert-ops corporations were being "managed" by Lockheed Martin,
one of the largest military contractors in the world, while being
"supervised" by the Pentagon's Special Operations Command.[20]
Admiral Eric T. Olson had been the
head of Special Operations Command from 2007 to 2011, and in that year, Olson
led a successful initiative - endorsed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates - to encourage the promotion of
top special operations officials to higher positions in the whole military
command structure. The "trend" was to continue under the following
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who previously headed the CIA from 2009 to
2011.[21] When Olson left his position as head of Special Operations Command, he
was replaced with Admiral William McRaven, who served as the head of JSOC from
2008 to 2011, having followed Stanley McChrystal.
By January of 2012, Obama was
continuing with seeking to move further away from large-scale ground wars such
as in Iraq and Afghanistan , and refocus on "a smaller,
more agile force across Asia, the Pacific and the Middle
East ." Surrounded by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in full
uniforms adorned with medals, along with other top Pentagon officials,
President Obama delivered a rare press briefing at the Pentagon where he said
that, "our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United
States is going to maintain our military superiority." The priorities in
this strategy would be "financing for defense and offense in cyberspace,
for Special Operations forces and for the broad area of intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance."[22]
In February of 2012, Admiral William
H. McRaven, the head of the Special Operations Command, was "pushing for
a larger role for his elite units who have traditionally operated in the dark
corners of American foreign policy," advocating a plan that "would
give him more autonomy to position his forces and their war-fighting equipment
where intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed,"
notably with expansions in mind for Asia, Africa and Latin America. McRaven
stated that, "It's not really about Socom [Special Operations Command]
running the global war on terrorism... I don't think we're ready to do that.
What it's about is how do I better support" the major regional military
command structures.[23]
In the previous decade, roughly 80% of
US Special Operations forces were deployed in the Middle
East , but McRaven wanted them to spread to other regions, as well
as to be able to "quickly move his units to potential hot spots without
going through the standard Pentagon process governing overseas
deployments." The Special Operations Command numbered around 66,000
people, double the number since 2001, and its budget had reached $10.5 billion,
from $4.2 billion in 2001.[24]
In March of 2012, a Special Forces
commander, Admiral William H. McRaven, developed plans to expand special
operations units, making them "the force of choice" against
"emerging threats" over the following decade. McRaven's Special
Operations Command oversees more than 60,000 military personnel and civilians,
saying in a draft paper circulated at the Pentagon that: "We are in a
generational struggle... For the foreseeable future, the United States
The expansion of global special forces
operations was largely in reaction to the increasingly difficult challenge of
positioning large military forces around the world, and carrying out large
scale wars and occupations, for which there is very little public support at
home or abroad. In 2013, the Special Operations Command had forces operating
in 92 different countries around the world, with one Congressional critic
accusing McRaven of engaging in "empire building."[26] The expanded
presence of these operations is a major factor contributing to
"destabilization" around the world, especially in major war zones
like Pakistan.[27]
In 2013, McRaven's Special Operations
Command gained new authorities and an expanded budget, with McRaven testifying
before the Senate Armed Services Committee that, "On any day of the year
you will find special operations forces [in] somewhere between 70 and 90
countries around the world."[28] In 2012, it was reported that such
forces would be operating in 120 different countries by the end of the year.[29]
In December of 2012, it was announced
that the U.S. was sending 4,000 soldiers to 35 different African countries as
"part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle
extremists and give the U.S. a ready and trained force to dispatch to Africa
if crises requiring the U.S. military emerge," operating under the
Pentagon's newest regional command, AFRICOM, established in 2007.[30]
By September of 2013, the U.S.
military had been involved in various activities in Algeria, Angola, Benin,
Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Senegal,
Seychelles, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia, among others, constructing
bases, undertaking "security cooperation engagements, training exercises,
advisory deployments, special operations missions, and a growing logistics
network."[31]
In short, Obama's global 'war of terror' has expanded to roughly 100
countries around the world, winding down the large-scale military invasions
and occupations such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, and increasing the
"small-scale" warfare operations of Special Forces, beyond the rule
of law, outside Congressional and public oversight, conducting "snatch
and grab" operations, training domestic repressive military forces in
nations largely run by dictatorships to undertake their own operations on
behalf of the 'Global Godfather.'
Make no mistake: this is global
warfare. Imagine for a moment the international outcry that would result from
news of China or Russia
Indeed, America
has long been the Global Godfather applying the 'Mafia Principles' of
international relations, lock-in-step with its Western lackey organized crime
'Capo' states such as Great Britain
and France
Whether the president is Clinton,
Bush, or Obama, the Empire of Terror wages on its global campaign of
domination and subjugation, to the detriment of all humanity, save those
interests that sit atop the constructed global hierarchy. It is in the
interests of the ruling elite that America
The world at large - across the Middle
East, Africa, Asia, Latin America - suffers
the greatest hardships of the Western Mafia imperial system: entrenched
poverty, exploitation, environmental degradation, war and destruction. The
struggle against the Empire cannot we waged and won from the outside alone.
The rest of the world has been struggling to survive against the Western Empire for decades, and, in truth, hundreds of
years. For the struggle to succeed (and it can succeed),
a strong anti-Empire movement must develop within the imperial powers
themselves, and most especially within the United States
Or... we could all just keep shopping
and watching TV, blissfully blind to the global campaign of terror and war
being waged in our names around the world. Certainly, such an option may be
appealing, but ultimately, wars abroad come home to roost. As George Orwell
once wrote: "The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be
continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and
ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have
existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the
brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own
subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia , but to keep the very structure of society
intact."
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a 26-year old
researcher and writer based in Montreal ,
Canada
References
[1] Max Fisher, "The Special Ops Command
That's Displacing The CIA," The Atlantic ,
1 December 2009:
[2] Mark Mazzetti , "U.S. Mideast ,"
The New York Times, 24 May 2010:
[3] Eric Black,
"Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination
ring'," Minnesota Post, 11 March 2009:
[4] John D.
Danusiewicz, "Cheney Praises 'Silent Professionals' of Special
Operations," American Forces Press Service, 11 June 2005:
[5] Max Fisher,
"The Special Ops Command That's Displacing The CIA," The Atlantic , 1 December 2009:
[6] Mark Mazzetti and
Eric Schmitt, "U.S.
Halted Some Raids in Afghanistan
[7] Jeremy Scahill, The
Secret US War in Pakistan
[8] Adam Ciralsky,
"Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy," Vanity Fair, January 2010:
[9] Mark Mazzetti,
"C.I.A. Sought Blackwater's Help to Kill Jihadists," The New York
Times, 19 August 2009:
[10] R. Jeffrey Smith
and Joby Warrick, "Blackwater tied to clandestine CIA raids," The
Washington Post, 11 December 2009:
[11] James Risen and
Mark Mazzetti, "C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on
Drones," The New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html
[12] James Risen and
Mark Mazzetti, "Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids," The
New York Times, 10 December 2009:
[13] Jeremy Scahill,
"The (Not So) Secret (Anymore) US War in Pakistan
[14] March Ambinder,
"Obama Gives Commanders Wide Berth for Secret Warfare," The Atlantic , 25 May 2010:
[15] Mark Mazzetti , "U.S. Mideast ," The New York Times,
24 May 2010:
[16] Marc Ambinder,
"Obama Gives Commanders Wide Berth for Secret Warfare," 25 May 2010:
[17] Max Fisher,
"The End of Dick Cheney's Kill Squads," The Atlantic ,
4 June 2010:
[18] Karen DeYoung
and Greg Jaffe, "U.S.
[19] Dexter Filkins
and Mark Mazzetti, "Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill
Militants," The New York Times, 14 March 2010:
[20] Mark Mazzetti , "U.S.
[21] Thom Shanker and
Eric Schmitt, "Special Operations Veterans Rise in Hierarchy," The
New York Times, 8 August 2011:
[22] Elisabeth
Bumiller and Thom Shanker, "Obama Puts His Stamp on Strategy for a Leaner
Military," The New York Times, 5 January 2012:
[23] Eric Schmitt,
Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker, "Admiral Seeks Freer Hand in Deployment
of Elite Forces," The New York Times, 12 February 2012:
[24] Ibid.
[25] David S. Cloud,
"U.S.
[26] Eric Schmitt and
Thom Shanker, "A Commander Seeks to Chart a New Path for Special
Operations," The New York Times, 1 May 2013:
[27] Nick Turse,
"How Obama's destabilizing the world," Salon, 19 September 2011:
[28] Walter Pincus,
"Special Operations wins in 2014 budget," The Washington Post, 11
April 2013:
[29] David Isenberg,
"The Globalisation of U.S.
[30] Tom Bowman,
"U.S. Military Builds
Up Its Presence In Africa ," NPR, 25
December 2012:
Lolita C. Baldor,
"Army teams going to Africa as terror
threat grows," Yahoo! News, 24 December 2012:
[31] Nick Turse,
"The Startling Size of US Military Operations in Africa ,"
Mother Jones, 6 September 2013:
DAVID DRUDING’S SHORT LIST OF OBAMA
FAILURES AND PREFERENCE FOR GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE 9-30-12
I know that a Mittwit - Lyin' Ryan ticket is indeed scary but the
expansion and misguided (in more ways that one) support for drone warfare, the
savior of wall st at main st's expense, the frontal attack on heroic whistle
blowing about many important issues including Assange and Manning's exposure
of int'l war crimes by our military, the development & final signing of
the hideous ndaa, the waffling on crucial issues including global climate
change, attempting to push gmo's and monsanto hegemony in that field on the
planet, (shall I continue ?) by our
present commander-in-chief Obama makes it pretty easy for me to pull the lever
for Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, rather than hold my
nose and vote for Mr Hope&Change after the past 3.5+yrs of
disappointments.
END OBAMA’S FAILURES
NEWSLETTER #1 from Peace, Justice Perspective
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