Joe, unless you have access to the kill list, you don’t know any more than I do who is being targeted and the rational.
Oh, I get it: you get to make all sorts of accusations about what we are doing, but when someone punches a hole them, then you pretend we don't know enough to say one way or another.
Anyway, no, I don't need to have access to the "Kill or Capture List." Just like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Professor Cole, and you, I can look at the actual strikes that have been carried out and draw conclusions from them about who is being targeted.
Our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan make it pretty clear that we are very comfortable waging military violence against countries and elements within countries that not a threat to the security of the US.
President Obama didn't invade Iraq - he opposed invading Iraq. As for Afghanistan, we invaded that country to rout al Qaeda, a group that proved pretty damn convincingly that they are, in fact, a threat to the United States.
But beyond that, your logic is unsound. "Because the U.S. invaded Iraq, that shows that the strikes against al Qaeda are not being carried out to stop terrorist attacks." That makes no sense - it's just an ad homimen argument. You're merely accusing the United States of being Very Bad People, so therefore, anything it does must be Very Bad.
If you want to argue about the drone strikes, argue about the drone strikes. You're quite comfortable doing that with the information you have, so you'll have to forgive me if your insistence that no one else is allowed to do so isn't terribly compelling.
The technology behind drones is not just easy to replicate; it's easy to develop from scratch, too. This isn't like the hydrogen bomb situation, in which the Soviets never would have been able to build one if the U.S. hadn't first produced one for them to copy.
Building a remote-controlled aircraft is trivially easy for a state. The satellite communications that allow it to be long-distance remotely piloted in real time is little different from the technology that allows you to stream Gangnam Style covers on Youtube.
FDR’s unwritten order to Secretary Henry Knox was during a time of a war declared by an Act of Congress
Just as Obama's have been during a time of war declared by an Act of Congress - the September 2001 AUMF.
Yamamoto was not "within a war zone." He was flying between islands, well behind the lines. BTW, it is perfectly legitimate to launch attacks against legitimate targets off the battlefield. That's why countries at war try to bomb each other's air fields and armament factories.
with no civilians nearby.
Civilians "nearby" has never been a standard for calling something a war crime. The standards are 1) the deliberate targeting of civilians or 2) lack of reasonable actions to protect civilians. Neither of these have anything to do with whether or not the President signed off on the orders.
If this investigation is handled in a fair, professional, and objective manner, the United States has nothing to fear from it.
If you actually read the statements from the UN, they are steering a neutral, investigatory course, and avoiding prejudging the outcome.
American officials should view this investigation as an opportunity. There are a lot of question out there, and good portion of them are being asked by people who would treat a UN report as a legitimate, reliable authority. Those who reject the report once it clears the US, after having called for it and celebrated today's announcement, can be safely ignored.
the current vogue term is “Unlawful Enemy Combatants”.
This term comes from the Geneva Conventions. I didn't realize they were either current, or in vogue.
That we cannot come up with a reasonable definition of who we are fighting is an indication of our befuddlement.
I agree: those of you who cannot come up with (or who pretend to be unable to come up with) a reasonable definition of who we are fighting are befuddled.
FDR personally signed off on the shoot-down of Admiral Yamamoto.
But beyond that, your whole line of reasoning is bizarre. If a two-star general signed off on targeting an individual leader, that wouldn't be a war crime. If the POTUS signed off on targeting, say, a military base with 1000 people on it, that wouldn't be a war crime - but if the POTUS signs off on targeting one person, that's a war crime?
The targets of the drone strikes (Al-Qaeda and its affiliated organizations) do not have to be “an enemy army of a state on which the US has declared war.” They are non-state enemies of the US who are waging war against the US.
Even more, they are non-state enemies of the US who are waging war against the US against whom Congress has declared war.
When opponents of using force against al Qaeda harp on the (imaginary) lack of connections between, for instance, AQAP and the bin Laden/Zawahiri organization, and claim that this (alleged) distinction renders the strikes in Yemen illegal, that are implicitly acknowledging that, yes, the U.S. is allowed to use force against al Qaeda, because they were covered in the September 2001 AUMF.
To call these Unlawful Enemy Combatants “criminals,” as if they had just knocked off a Seven-Eleven convenience store, is ludicrous.
This argument misses the point. We use the word "criminal" to describe Charles Manson and the BTK killer, too. The distinction between a criminal and an enemy is a categorical one, not a difference in significance or badness. Many of the airplane mechanics and infantrymen the U.S. killed in 1944 were much less of a threat to us than, for instance, the Newtown shooter - and yet, the laws of war applied to what out government could do to the Germans, while domestic criminal laws applies to what the government can do to domestic mass murderers.
since you cannot declare war against something that is not a country.
Where are you getting this?
The Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. There is no language or even legal precedent limiting that power so that only state can be the subject of a war declaration.
Under American Constitutional law, if the Constitution grants a body a certain power, that body is limited in the exercise of that power only by other Constitutional limits (such as the Bill of Rights), or by legislation or court ruling that draw on powers granted to, respectively, the Congress and the judiciary. Otherwise, questions about the appropriate use of that power are within the discretion of the empowered body.
They are suspected criminals or terrorists. But they haven’t been put on trial.
It is also false to claim that "wartime enemy" and "criminal" are mutually-exclusive categories. Prior to being captured, a suspected war criminal can be shot at just like any other wartime enemy. After being captured, that person can then be tried as a criminal. See the Geneva Conventions.
The permission by Washington and London for drones to kill people
involves a clear depriving of those individuals of their right to due process.
Yes, when there isn't a pilot on the airplane that drops a bomb, that changes everything from a legal perspective. Umwut?
The executive is the judge, jury and executioner. The executive is always the "judge, jury, and execution" in the prosecution of a war. That's what war powers are - the legal authority to target and kill people against whom the country is at war.
There is just so much wrong here that I can't help but pile on:
D) the actions of so-called “terrorists” were defensive in nature (they wanted us the Hell out of their country — and their continent) and, therefore, eminently justifiable — along the lines of sic semper tyrannus.
Notice how the actual majority of Libyans who support the American presence, and who gave these religious extremists a whupping at the polls, and who gave them another whupping after the attacks by storming their parties' offices and driving them from the city, and who stages massive rallies apologizing for Stevens' death, get written out of the story entirely.
No, only the people who murdered and ambassador and fired mortar and rocket rounds in a densely populated city count as "real Libyans."
This is a frequent error you see among the less thoughtful segment of the left. They look at a foreign country, find the most violent, anti-American faction therein, and proclaim that they - and only they - represent the values and aspirations of that society.
In the interest of probity, it should be conceded that the dearly departed “Ambassador” a gentleman who just prior to his investiture had, in his capacity as arms merchant and CIA operative, glibly and gladly participated in the recent and violent overthrow of the government of the formerly sovereign Libyan nation. In fact the Ambassador’s uncurbed enthusiasms (which mirrored those of his employer — no more, no less) led him to oversee yet another American torture chamber
I fear there has been some oversight. You must have intended to provide some shred of evidence for these claims, but hit submit too early.
The most important thing to Protest People is their self-image as Protest People.
It reminds me of 2009, when at long last, the fight over torture broke out into open warfare between the Republicans (pro-torture) and the Democrats led by Obama (anti-torture), and Glenn Greenwald, who had spent years expounding on how much he wanted to end torture, decided that the most important thing for him to do was to repeat the Republicans' false talking point that Nancy Pelosi had been briefed by the CIA, so therefore the Democrats lacked the moral standing to fight that fight.
Yeah, the Sec’y just asserted that there is no accountability or review necessary at the State Dep’t. No matter what happens. Only an old stick-in-the-mud would care about what actually happened. Look forward, not back, my friend.
Tinbox, Secretary of State Clinton was the one who ordered the State Department Inspector General to investigate the attack in Benghazi and issue a report - a report that resulted in several high-level State Department figures "spending more time with their families."
To accuse her of not wanting investigations or accountability is ludicrous. She wasn't dismissing the necessity of investigating what happened; she was dismissing the necessity of investigating Susan Rice's talking points.
What’s interesting, if not new, is how reckless the Rs are in pushing an internal advantage.
Their behavior on Benghazi reminds me of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The President really did cheat on his wife with a young woman in the Oval Office. The Republicans really did have an issue they could use to score some points and make him look bad - but that wasn't enough for them. They had to blow it up into a literal impeachment, and the public ended up rallying around Clinton out of disgust with their overreach.
There really were some problems in the State Department's offices in Benghazi; a number of people in senior positions in the State Department had to leave after the Inspector General's report came out. The Republicans really could have made some hay out of this, but instead, they've grossly overreached again.
But Bill, how does Johnson's blather about Susan Rice's talking points "advance the dialogue regarding necessary measures that should have been in place, and that should be in place in the future?"
You do know that that was what Hillary was chastising him about, right?
From # 7. Just calling all Salafi groups “al-Qaeda” is propaganda.
It's interesting to me how this bit of propaganda, once the sole province of the right, became popular among some so-called-anti-imperialist leftists, the moment the U.S. declined to back up the cooperative oil dictator in Libya.
Oddly enough, I see many people simultaneously insisting that al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula isn't al Qaeda, but every Islamist in Libya is.
I don't see how Obama's speech supports the idea that "Syrians are on their own." You mention both the "multilateral cooperation with allies to face security challenges" and "We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom." Both of these doctrines are completely in line with, for instance, our role in the UN mission over Libya, and can apply to Syria, too.
I find the claim that the targeted strikes against al Qaeda could lead to war with Somalia, Pakistan, or Yemen highly implausible. The governments in all three of those countries - such as they are - are supportive of those strikes. In Pakistan, it's the strikes against the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban - the large, local militias - that are controversial.
If you're not talking about those states going to war against us, but rather the underground terrorists themselves, I'm afraid that horse is out of the barn. They are already at war with us, to the extent they can be, and have been for at least a decade and a half. Since Obama ramped up the campaign of targeted strikes, their capacity to wage that war has been decimated. In 1999, they very nearly sunk an American warship. In 2001 - well, we all know what happened in 2001.
The difference between Martin Luther King and several of the commenters above: Martin Luther King congratulated and thanked Lyndon Johnson for passing the Civil Rights Act.
On #4: it wasn't only the mercury/toxics rule that has made life difficult for the coal-burners. From coal ash to particulates to mountaintop removal to the cross-state pollution regs, the EPA has passed a number of rules that disproportionately affect the coal industry.
The Environmental Protection Agency has to its credit begun insisting on filters to prevent mercury emissions at US coal plants, imposing costs that have caused many of them to close down. They can’t compete with increasingly inexpensive natural gas and wind if they have to invest billions to avoid poisoning us.
"It will still be legal to build a coal-fired power plant; you'll just go bankrupt."
When it comes to the effect of regulation on coal plant closings, expectations are as important as the costs imposed to date. Building a power plant is a massively expensive project, and they have to run for a long time to make that money back. Even if building a new coal plant is still viable under existing regulations, the expectation that it will be less profitable in the future can cause the power companies to shy away.
The USA may not supply al-Nusra, but they encourage their allies in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf autocracies, and in Turkey to give all manner of support to radicals in Syria. One could accuse the US gov’t of playing the role of Bart Simpson, but gone global: “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove anything!”
One could, on must stronger grounds, accuse you of inventing a story out of whole cloth, realizing you have nothing to back it up, and then coming up with an excuse for why a lack of evidence shouldn't be used to rebut you.
The use of the term and concept "objectively pro-" is as morally and intellectually bankrupt when used to slur people you dislike, as it was when it was used to slur opponents of the Iraq War.
Whether you’re burning coal, natural gas, or a petroleum derivative, you are bringing up ancient carbon that has been isolated from the biosphere for millions of years and injecting it into the atmosphere.
But in massively different amounts. It's the levels that matter here, remember?
If drilling for natural gas was "stopped. Period" as you recommend, zero (0) of the reduction in coal capacity would have occurred, and billions of tons more of carbon dioxide, as well as mercury, would have been released into the atmosphere. To advocate for that is the most irresponsible thing an environmentalist can do.
I'm an optimist, and agree that we can "do it all with renewables" eventually, but it's going to take a generation to get there, and the coal plants need to close yesterday.
Also, on the point about the release of methane during frackinig: that is something that can be controlled. Proper techniques, enforced by regulation, can eliminate, or almost eliminate, such releases. It is possible to get natural gas without those methane emissions.
Burning coal, on the other hand, cannot be done without releasing all of that carbon dioxide.
The problems with fracking need to be handled through regulation. The problems with coal cannot be handled except by getting rid of coal.
I attended a presentation from a solar company called Vivant that has an interesting model for overcoming the funding and logistical problems that have impeded residential PV proliferation.
This company doesn't sell solar panels. They continue to own the panels that they install on your roof, and sell you the electricity they produce at a lower cost than the electricity from the power company. The homeowner doesn't put down any money up front, and is not responsible for maintaining or replacing the solar panels, leaving that job to the company. After 20 years, when the solar panels are degraded and obsolete, Vivant will either give them to the homeowner to keep using, getting free power from them, or replace them with an updated system.
Apparently, Vivant is now on track to become the largest commercial power company in the US within a few years.
Google ” methane, fracking” and you’ll find lots of article that indicate much higher release of methane from fracking than had previously been suspected.
Sure, but the leap from that to "therefore, natural gas may be as bad as coal" is a vast one, and I'm going to need more than a lecture about ideological purity before I credit that assertion.
But Burning natural gas instead of coal will not save us from a climate disaster.
Switching from coal plants to natural gas plants is one early step in an extended process that will save us from a climate disaster. It's a transitional step, not a permanent fix.
You know what else won't save us from climate disaster? Pretending that we can shut down all the coal plants next Tuesday without a replacement. Switching from coal to natural gas won't get us all the way to where we need to be, but it will do a lot more than putting all of your energy into talking talking talking about "drastic action" that wont happen.
Specially bad news is that 1.4 gigawatts of new, dirty coal power was brought online in 2012 in the US.
Just so everyone is clear: that is a gross figure. During 2012, 9 gigawatts of old, dirtier coal power was shut down (8.5% of the total coal-fired capacity in the United States), representing a net reduction of 7.6 gigawatts. Even this figure underestimates the net gain, because the plants being shut down are much less efficient than the new ones.
In coming years, coal-fired capacity is projected to be retired at an even faster rate, while the construction of new plants will drop to zero before the end of this decade.
I notice that there is no link provided to support that claim that methane releases from natural gas drilling "may" make the replacement of coal-fired power plants with gas-fired plants "a wash."
What "betrayal of the Kurds" are you talking about?
The problem with this theory, Roland, is that the West has not been working with the al-Nusra Front. In fact, the U.S. has been trying to keep weapons out of their hands, and has declared them to be a terrorist organization.
That's a fine argument against anyone who is proposing to actually ban all guns, but the vast majority of anti-massacre proposals come up well short of that.
For instance, banning high-capacity magazines. You say that bans never work, but I can't help but notice that absinthe sales in the United States were virtually unheard of during the period when it was banned, but vodka and gin were still legal.
You point out that murderers would have no problems violating gun laws; how about federally-licenses gun dealers? They virtually all comply very strictly with the law - they're honest businessmen, and trying to make a quick buck on an illegal deal puts their whole business in danger. We have heavily-regulated liquor stores all over the country, and I've never been offered cocaine by a liquor store clerk. Not once.
If you look at the countries-of-origin of the terrorists who have launched attacks on the United States, you'll find that almost all of them come from countries, like Bahrain, that are long standing, but undemocratic, allies of the United States. Everyone loves the theory that military action causes terrorism, but there are virtually no terror attacks carried out against the United States by Iraqis, Iranians, Lebanese, Libyans, Afghans, or residents of other countries against whom we have been at war. Instead, they come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the Emirates - countries where we've never waged war, but which have oppressive governments that we choose to back.
Obviously, the United States has a national security interest in having a Persian Gulf naval base, but at what cost? Getting into bed with these nasty little dictatorships in the Middle East harms our national security more than it helps.
Thank you, Mr. Martin, but I understand all of that already. That is exactly why it would make sense for a Middle Eastern political movement which is seeking to increase its support and influence in the Arab world to put out anti-Israel rhetoric and cast its actions as part of the fight against Israel, even if Israel is not actually very important in their thinking - because, as you way, "Most of the Arab world..." feels as you describe, and tapping into that feeling is a way to appeal to them.
"This is what Osama bin Laden had to say about the motivation for the attack on 9/11."
That's nice. What did George Bush have to say about the motivation for the attack on Iraq? Shall we take him at his word, too?
Again, it's best to look at actions, not words, when trying to understand political leaders. Bin Laden hated the Saudi government, and carried out no end of attacks against the Saudi government and royal family. He said he hated the United States, and carried out numerous attacks on the United States. He said he hated Israel, and...attacked New York?
The absence of attacks alleged to be from al Qaeda since 2004 strongly suggests that that attack was not conducted by them. Their m.o. is to keep hitting the same target. "Connected with" is a vague phrase, and while I have no doubt that there are Palestinian factions that have good relations with AQ, that's quite a bit different from AQ itself conducting operations or being in the country.
As for the Mauriania embassy attack, remember that the Pakistani militants who conducted the Mumbai attack went after a Jewish community center - yet that was clearly an attack on India.
We've seen what it looks like when al Qaeda goes after a country, and it's not two ambiguous operations in a decade, without statements taking credit.
Prof. Cole's description there reminded by of the film "A Perfect Storm." That, too, was an attempt to reverse-engineer actual human experience from a dry, factual, event-driven narrative.
I also can't help but notice that, for all of bin Laden's talk about how deeply and profoundly he cares about the Israel-Palestine conflict, al Qaeda has never launched attacks against Israel.
Sometimes, political leaders trying to win the support of a broader public feign concern over an issue that they know that public cares about. It's best not to take politicians at the word, but to look at their actual records to figure out their intent and belief system.
What really jumps out at me about those omissions is that they would have made the plot more interesting. KSM throwing the torturers off the courier's scent while he was being tortured, and then the decision to look at that courier again when the new administration came into power - that's one of the most interesting details of the entire story. Similarly, when the OLC memos came out, one detail that emerged was that the CIA interrogators, who had been using legitimate methods, reported that a detainee was cooperating, but because he wasn't providing any intelligence linking bin Laden to Iraqi WMDs, Dick Cheney ordered him to be tortured, and he stopped cooperating. Again, that's a very interesting plot twist!
Ditto with the transfer of resources and attention to Iraq. As you say, they already have the unit complaining that they've been denied resources. That's an important piece of information, that helps to establish the environment under which they are working. Why not flesh it out?
If these details had been left out for aesthetic reasons, I could understand that, but in reality, those details would have made it a better movie. They would have made the plot more interesting and the characters more impressive. It's difficult to believe, then, that the decision to excise them was anything but political.
OK, walk me through this: the Tauregs have been beaten by the Wahabbi-backed fundamentalists, and this is because the Tauregs have Gadhaffi's heave weaponry. Is that what you're saying?
It appears that the majority of commenters are ignoring what Professor Cole wrote, as well as the stories he linked to, is a rush to use a pre-positioned story line that, while it doesn't do a good job matching up with the facts, tells them what they want to hear.
First of all, Lyndie England was one of eleven soldiers convicted at Abu Ghraib, so discussing the scandal in terms of what she, individually, came up with is unhelpful. The record from the case shows pretty clearly that she was going along with her scumbag superior/slash boyfriend, Charles Graner, who was a corrections officer in his civilian life - which has all sorts of wonderful implications.
Secondly, you move the goalposts pretty dramatically when go from "she was just following orders" to "they learned their techniques somewhere." The night-squad freak show involving England and Graner, which got all of the attention, seems to have been a distinct, although related, scandal from the authorized, professional "enhanced interrogation" practices that the actual interrogators from the CIA and military engaged in. Noting that one of these things happened doesn't eliminate the existence of the other.
Watching this interview, it struck me how quickly things are moving.
To take one example, look at Turkey's relationship with its neighbors. Just a few years ago, they were on excellent terms with Syria, Israel, and Iran. Now...not so much, and it's not because there has been some major political reorientation in Ankara.
Many suicidal acts people commit are half-hearted. It is easy to give up halfway through the pile of pills, or change your mind and open the door of the garage in which you're running your car.
Pulling the trigger of a gun, on the other hand, is a much more definitive proposition. The use of a firearm turns many "attempted suicides" into actual suicides.
It has not been proved that Anwar al-Awlaki, and American citizen killed by a US drone in Yemen, did more than threaten the US.
Proved to whom? Abdulmuttallab testified in court that Awlaki helped organize the attempted bombing of an airliner filled with passengers on Christmas Day 2009.
This is an excellent comment, with one weakness: Clinton launched cruise missile attacks on al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in August 1998, in response to the bombings of two American embassies in Africa.
There are, in fact, some pretty good reasons to believe that surrounding Iran was a motivating factor in why the Bush administration (and the Republicans to this day) want to maintain a permanent presence in Afghanistan. There's their states desire to carry out a series of wars against the "Axis of Evil" countries (plus Syria), for one.
But more importantly, there's the screaming need to come up with some explanation for actions that can't be explained by the initial war goals - routing al Qaeda and toppling the regime that backed them. I agree that oil, minerals, and China don't fit the bill, Bill, but what does that leave?
There is every reason to think we went in to engage in the (admittedly foolish) game of “nation-bulding” in order to create a nation and government that would maintain a bulwark against terrorism springing from its territory.
The problem is the U.S. got bogged down in counter-insurgency.
You talk about this like we blew a tire, and it's nobody's fault and everybody's. The Bush Administration got bogged down in counter-insurgency, and they did so because they made a policy choice that they intended to made Afghanistan a client state and maintain it within the American military sphere. Moving into counter-insurgency was not a natural outcome of The successful effort to oust the Taliban and Mullah Omar, and to deprive Al-Qaeda of a safe-haven in Afghanistan. Kabul fell to an Afghan army that was receiving air support and some special forces help from a few hundred Americans. There was something else going on in the Bush administration's head that led them to determine counter-insurgency was necessary, and we needed to have tens of thousands of troops in the country.
Rest assured, the U.S. did not engage in Afghanistan to “surround Iran, claim minerals or oil, or keep the territory out of Chinese hands.”
I don't know how you can say all of that. There is clearly some other explanation necessary to explain the Bush administration's actions.
You wrote exactly the same thing about Obama's managed withdrawal from Iraq, JT, and you were dead wrong.
What do I suggest? I suggest putting the responsibility for planning and conducting the withdrawal in the hands of competent professionals who, unlike some, don't consider it a virtue to have exactly the same answer to every question. YOU are going to criticize ME for being attached to a narrative? JT, you project more than an opera singer.
I suggest basing our strategy on the negotiated withdrawal from Iraq: a reality-based policy, setting, announcing, and clearly demonstrating a timeline for withdrawal, and giving the people on the ground a high degree of flexibility in how to plan and operate as they move down the timeline. I suggest that a withdrawal can also generate positive political results.
But mostly, JT, what I suggest is that the administration actually try to answer the question you're asking, as opposed to merely using it as a launching point for one's very favorite boilerplate. A Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? Really? You sound like a parody.
advanced natural gas technologies are far far cheaper than solar.
At the moment. Natural gas is unlikely to stay at this low level over the long-term, especially as demand keeps increasing, while solar prices continue to drop.
I’m told by these smarter people that I’m obviously uninformed if I don’t see the wisdom in trying to kill every “terrorist” out there before they can do anything bad to us.
Rule of thumb: in any debate, the person who makes an argument to assign to the other side is losing.
"...trying to kill every 'terrorist' out there"
"...don't think Iraqis are capable of democracy..."
So far, the case for Brennan's complicity in torture looks thin and circumstantial. "Served in CIA during the torture program" sounds about right, from what I've seen so far: he worked for the agency, which is a sprawling bureaucracy with many arms, and one of them was torturing people at the direction of the White House. I haven't seen any direct evidence of his involvement, but then, the CIA isn't the most transparent bureaucracy in the world, so we can't really say at this point whether he was involved. This is concerning, but in the sense of requiring more information, as opposed to ruling him out.
We'll see how "liberal Zionists" react. It seems equally likely that the J-Street crowd will take this opportunity to peel off some pro-Israel-but-not-Likudnik support from the AIPAC crowd.
There was no Tea Party when Obama made his initial SecDef pick, and he had quite a few priorities (ending the Iraq War, avoiding catastrophic collapse in Afghanistan) that were more important at that moment in time.
And maybe Hegel would not have been such a fan of the flying killer robots. There is only a tiny fringe in American politics, among the far left and the libertarians, who oppose using drones against al Qaeda. Chuck Hagel is almost certainly not among them.
they’re fast, cheap and out of control.
You left out "effective," and they're perfectly in control. Your complaint isn't that they are failing to achieve their purpose, or that they are running wild and going beyond that purpose. Your complaint is that you don't agree with their purpose, and you're using the term "out of control" the same way a libertarian might use it when discussing Medicaid.
before the war’s inception everyone from Scott Ritter to Pat Buchanan had outed the WMD lies, so what was the excuse?
It seems pretty clear to me that the Bush administration lied to Congress about the WMD intelligence, about the al Qaeda/Iraq links, and about its intentions, even more shamelessly than it lied to the American public. If you go back and look at the statements of half-hearted supporters like Hagel or John Kerry, they seem to be dropping hints that they know things the general public does not, that makes the case for the war stronger.
Why is the pro-Israeli lobby so upset that Hagel used the term “Jewish lobby”
There is some unfortunate history there. A term like "Jewish Lobby" carries some unintended baggage, some echoes of old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
But mostly, it's just a cheap shot that helps them cast Hagel's actual foreign policy positions in a worse light.
No need for Chuck Hagel to perform Maoist self-criticism regarding his previous statements regarding gay and lesbian rights. He has already apologized.
He apologized for one rude comment about an Ambassadorial nominee, and that is all to the good.
That's not the same thing as renouncing his previous views on issues of substance, such as allowing gay people to serve in the military - a little matter which is, in fact, somewhat important for the next Secretary of Defense.
I have to disagree, Bill. Weakening the conservatives and damaging their credibility on foreign policy remains a top-tier objective for this country's well-being.
Sure, Seth9 - if you are deeply enmeshed in Washington politics and can tell all of the players without a scorecard. I remember when Rush Limbaugh and National Review were calling Hagel "Senator Betrayus" for his conversion during the Iraq War.
But to people who don't read about politics all day, in this most polarized of political cultures, much of that nuance is likely to be lost.
Benefit of the doubt, nothing! I want to see Hagel perform a little Maoist self-criticism session before the Armed Services committee on the issue of gay rights.
As a Democrat, I would ideally prefer that the President select a Democrat with similar views.
This is true. On the other hand, as a Democrat, I am quite happy to see discord sown in the enemy camp. This pick is going to put the Republicans at each other's throats.
Hagel has no natural constituency, except perhaps for those who want a foreign and defense policy that is tougher on Israel and softer on Iran.
That is not an insignificant number of Americans.
Israel would be clear that Obama views the Jewish state with hostility. Iran would be clear that it has nothing serious to fear from the Obama administration.
A little perspective is in order here. "Hostility" in this sentence means "Wants to give them billions of dollars a year in aid and sell them the latest military equipment while maintaining close military and intelligence ties, but occasionally breaking with them on policy questions," while "nothing serious to fear" means "being defined as a state sponsor of terror, subject to extensive sanctions, and generally being treated as a threat to national security and potential opponent in a war."
The Defense of Marriage Act forbids the military, or any other federal department, to extend marriage benefits to same-sex married couples. It's not something that the Secretary of Defense, or anyone else in the executive branch, can do, unless the law is repealed or overturned.
That President Obama, the force behind DADT repeal, nominated him indicates to me that Obama is quite comfortable that Hagel will implement DADT repeal according to administration policy.
Think about the "optics" of Graham's outburst. Obama reaches across the aisle and nominates a Republican to be his Secretary of Defense, and the Republicans respond by calling it an "in your face" pick that foretells an "in your face" second term.
A Republican Senator. It might not be the hardest task in the world, but President Obama sure does excel at making the Republicans look like irrational, bitter extremists.
You are so right about the stakes. Hagel's appointment - just his appointment going through, never mind what he does in office - will be a huge blow for the organized Likudnik lobby, a sign of their decline, and will drive a wedge down the middle of the conservative movement.
Well, his government is losing the civil war, despite vastly outclassing the rebels in military professionalism, firepower, organization, and political organization.
That seems to suggest that the rebels have a very large base of support.
In 1985 the City of Philadelphia killed minors who were innocent bystanders in attempting to evict MOVE activists from a rowhouse. The city paid millions to the estates of the decedent children.
Of course, the legal standards are very different for a domestic law enforcement agency operating within the United States, and an arm of the military operating overseas.
Whittling through the loaded language and poetic flights of fancy, the answers to your questions are:
1. The U.S. actions in Yemen have had the support of the Yemeni government all along, so there's nothing novel in Saleh's replacement giving them a green light. We had the same green light from Saleh.
2. The national interest behind fighting al Qaeda and its affiliates is...far too obvious to justify even these few characters I'm wasting on this question.
3. I can't really tell what #3 is. You just put a question mark at the end of some word salad.
That the US is using that method to come up with casualty estimates after a strike, not as a standard for determining whether to launch a strike against someone.
This explanation assumes that "the drone campaign" is a single, coherent thing that is being ramped up in Yemen and ramped down in Pakistan. In reality, though, drones are just a tool, and they are being used for different purposes in different places. Whatever is driving the increase in strikes in Yemen, it probably has little to do with the decline in strikes in Pakistan, which looks to me to be driven by the winding down of the ground war in Afghanistan.
To explain the decrease in strikes in Pakistan, I would look at America policy in Afghanistan. The withdrawal has begun, and troop levels and operations have fallen across the board. The strikes in Pakistan have always fallen into two categories: strikes against militants who move back and forth across the border and engage in the ground war in Afghanistan, and strikes against senior leaders of terrorists groups. The "signature strikes" in Pakistan, as opposed to the named-target strikes, are entirely or almost entirely the former - that is, an extension of the war in Afghanistan. The decrease in these strikes, without a drop in the named-target strikes, suggests that the decrease is an expression of the U.S. winding down the "Af-Pak War," while the war against al Qaeda continues.
The paper also revealed that the administration ‘counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.’
Just a reminder that the NYT described this as a method used in bomb damage assessments after a strike, not as a standard used in targeting.
However, fracking releases methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, so the impact on global warming of the US reduction from coal may not be as great as it seems.
I've seen too many global warming deniers respond to real numbers with a reference to some factor that they assume nobody has looked at - sunspots, cyclical changes - to find arguments like this compelling. With no quantification, just the observation that fracking can, sometimes, release some unspecified amount of carbon, it's difficult to take this seriously as a rebuttal to the actual, documented, world-leading reduction in GHG that the replacement of coal by gas has accomplished.
The economy still is struggling and hasn’t swung into high gear, and it is an open question what will happen when it does.
It isn't, really. As the economy has spent the last two years in slow-to-moderate growth mode, we haven't seen the reductions reverse, or even level off. We've seen them continue. This question seems to be quite a bit less open than the claim that methane releases undo the carbon gains of natural gas.
The recession ended over three years ago, but the reductions continue.
There was some fear that the American reductions were merely the result of the recession when, in 2010, there was a jump in emissions levels, but they dropped dramatically in 2011 and fell again in 2012, even as growth rates turned positive, indicating that there was a structural change happening, and not just a slowdown.
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Joe, unless you have access to the kill list, you don’t know any more than I do who is being targeted and the rational.
Oh, I get it: you get to make all sorts of accusations about what we are doing, but when someone punches a hole them, then you pretend we don't know enough to say one way or another.
Anyway, no, I don't need to have access to the "Kill or Capture List." Just like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Professor Cole, and you, I can look at the actual strikes that have been carried out and draw conclusions from them about who is being targeted.
Our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan make it pretty clear that we are very comfortable waging military violence against countries and elements within countries that not a threat to the security of the US.
President Obama didn't invade Iraq - he opposed invading Iraq. As for Afghanistan, we invaded that country to rout al Qaeda, a group that proved pretty damn convincingly that they are, in fact, a threat to the United States.
But beyond that, your logic is unsound. "Because the U.S. invaded Iraq, that shows that the strikes against al Qaeda are not being carried out to stop terrorist attacks." That makes no sense - it's just an ad homimen argument. You're merely accusing the United States of being Very Bad People, so therefore, anything it does must be Very Bad.
If you want to argue about the drone strikes, argue about the drone strikes. You're quite comfortable doing that with the information you have, so you'll have to forgive me if your insistence that no one else is allowed to do so isn't terribly compelling.
The technology behind drones is not just easy to replicate; it's easy to develop from scratch, too. This isn't like the hydrogen bomb situation, in which the Soviets never would have been able to build one if the U.S. hadn't first produced one for them to copy.
Building a remote-controlled aircraft is trivially easy for a state. The satellite communications that allow it to be long-distance remotely piloted in real time is little different from the technology that allows you to stream Gangnam Style covers on Youtube.
FDR’s unwritten order to Secretary Henry Knox was during a time of a war declared by an Act of Congress
Just as Obama's have been during a time of war declared by an Act of Congress - the September 2001 AUMF.
Yamamoto was not "within a war zone." He was flying between islands, well behind the lines. BTW, it is perfectly legitimate to launch attacks against legitimate targets off the battlefield. That's why countries at war try to bomb each other's air fields and armament factories.
with no civilians nearby.
Civilians "nearby" has never been a standard for calling something a war crime. The standards are 1) the deliberate targeting of civilians or 2) lack of reasonable actions to protect civilians. Neither of these have anything to do with whether or not the President signed off on the orders.
If this investigation is handled in a fair, professional, and objective manner, the United States has nothing to fear from it.
If you actually read the statements from the UN, they are steering a neutral, investigatory course, and avoiding prejudging the outcome.
American officials should view this investigation as an opportunity. There are a lot of question out there, and good portion of them are being asked by people who would treat a UN report as a legitimate, reliable authority. Those who reject the report once it clears the US, after having called for it and celebrated today's announcement, can be safely ignored.
The answer to your concern is very simple: do not attack people who have not attacked the United States.
What does that have to do with the war against al Qaeda? You do remember that they attacked the United States, right?
You may recall that the Constitution reserves the right to wage war to Congress
And you may recall a certain vote taken on September 20, 2001.
The Middle East is not ours to manage. They are fighting against our management. Their weapon is terrorism.
Sometimes the far left and the right wing come together.
The habit of attributing al Qaeda's terrorism to the people of the Middle East collectively is a good example.
We don’t like it because it works.
Your objection to the 9/11 attacks and the Bali nightclub bombing is merely "it works?" That is rather appalling.
For my part, I object to those attacks because of the massive loss of innocent human life, the same reason I object to the invasion of Iraq. YMMV.
Didn't you say the same thing about the Iraq War?
the current vogue term is “Unlawful Enemy Combatants”.
This term comes from the Geneva Conventions. I didn't realize they were either current, or in vogue.
That we cannot come up with a reasonable definition of who we are fighting is an indication of our befuddlement.
I agree: those of you who cannot come up with (or who pretend to be unable to come up with) a reasonable definition of who we are fighting are befuddled.
The U.S. is firing drones across a good portion of the globe,
The US is firing drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
some of them, according to reports (Can anyone confirm or deny?) on the basis of “racial profiling.”
There is not the slightest evidence for this claim. If you are going to make an accusation, it falls on you to provide backup.
FDR personally signed off on the shoot-down of Admiral Yamamoto.
But beyond that, your whole line of reasoning is bizarre. If a two-star general signed off on targeting an individual leader, that wouldn't be a war crime. If the POTUS signed off on targeting, say, a military base with 1000 people on it, that wouldn't be a war crime - but if the POTUS signs off on targeting one person, that's a war crime?
The targets of the drone strikes (Al-Qaeda and its affiliated organizations) do not have to be “an enemy army of a state on which the US has declared war.” They are non-state enemies of the US who are waging war against the US.
Even more, they are non-state enemies of the US who are waging war against the US against whom Congress has declared war.
When opponents of using force against al Qaeda harp on the (imaginary) lack of connections between, for instance, AQAP and the bin Laden/Zawahiri organization, and claim that this (alleged) distinction renders the strikes in Yemen illegal, that are implicitly acknowledging that, yes, the U.S. is allowed to use force against al Qaeda, because they were covered in the September 2001 AUMF.
To call these Unlawful Enemy Combatants “criminals,” as if they had just knocked off a Seven-Eleven convenience store, is ludicrous.
This argument misses the point. We use the word "criminal" to describe Charles Manson and the BTK killer, too. The distinction between a criminal and an enemy is a categorical one, not a difference in significance or badness. Many of the airplane mechanics and infantrymen the U.S. killed in 1944 were much less of a threat to us than, for instance, the Newtown shooter - and yet, the laws of war applied to what out government could do to the Germans, while domestic criminal laws applies to what the government can do to domestic mass murderers.
since you cannot declare war against something that is not a country.
Where are you getting this?
The Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. There is no language or even legal precedent limiting that power so that only state can be the subject of a war declaration.
Under American Constitutional law, if the Constitution grants a body a certain power, that body is limited in the exercise of that power only by other Constitutional limits (such as the Bill of Rights), or by legislation or court ruling that draw on powers granted to, respectively, the Congress and the judiciary. Otherwise, questions about the appropriate use of that power are within the discretion of the empowered body.
Of course these drone strikes will eventually be declared extra-legal and illegitimate in the eyes of the world
Really?
Would you care to make it interesting?
The people being targeted by the drones are not an enemy army of a state on which the US has declared war.
False.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists&sa=U&ei=sLwCUZjCBPCN0QGP7YHgAg&ved=0CBUQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNHSyAMQ3BGsTFCI0zbCm5Wfr4LYbg
They are suspected criminals or terrorists. But they haven’t been put on trial.
It is also false to claim that "wartime enemy" and "criminal" are mutually-exclusive categories. Prior to being captured, a suspected war criminal can be shot at just like any other wartime enemy. After being captured, that person can then be tried as a criminal. See the Geneva Conventions.
The permission by Washington and London for drones to kill people
involves a clear depriving of those individuals of their right to due process.
Yes, when there isn't a pilot on the airplane that drops a bomb, that changes everything from a legal perspective. Umwut?
The executive is the judge, jury and executioner. The executive is always the "judge, jury, and execution" in the prosecution of a war. That's what war powers are - the legal authority to target and kill people against whom the country is at war.
There is just so much wrong here that I can't help but pile on:
D) the actions of so-called “terrorists” were defensive in nature (they wanted us the Hell out of their country — and their continent) and, therefore, eminently justifiable — along the lines of sic semper tyrannus.
Notice how the actual majority of Libyans who support the American presence, and who gave these religious extremists a whupping at the polls, and who gave them another whupping after the attacks by storming their parties' offices and driving them from the city, and who stages massive rallies apologizing for Stevens' death, get written out of the story entirely.
No, only the people who murdered and ambassador and fired mortar and rocket rounds in a densely populated city count as "real Libyans."
This is a frequent error you see among the less thoughtful segment of the left. They look at a foreign country, find the most violent, anti-American faction therein, and proclaim that they - and only they - represent the values and aspirations of that society.
Slapping down Johnson, making it less likely that he or people like him will stick their heads up, does indeed advance the dialogue.
People like him need to be discredited so that the adults can talk about what's really important.
"Cognitive dissonance" has become one of those terms that people say to try to sound smart, like "leverage dynamism" and "change the paradigm."
In the interest of probity, it should be conceded that the dearly departed “Ambassador” a gentleman who just prior to his investiture had, in his capacity as arms merchant and CIA operative, glibly and gladly participated in the recent and violent overthrow of the government of the formerly sovereign Libyan nation. In fact the Ambassador’s uncurbed enthusiasms (which mirrored those of his employer — no more, no less) led him to oversee yet another American torture chamber
I fear there has been some oversight. You must have intended to provide some shred of evidence for these claims, but hit submit too early.
Dr Cole can paint his rosy picture of liberated Libya but the reality is becoming more apparent.
Dr. Cole has traveled through Libya since the revolution. How about you?
Libyans would be lucky if they can put the Genie back in the bottle
If only Libyans were lucky enough to be under the thumb of their psychotic former dictator.
Super390,
The most important thing to Protest People is their self-image as Protest People.
It reminds me of 2009, when at long last, the fight over torture broke out into open warfare between the Republicans (pro-torture) and the Democrats led by Obama (anti-torture), and Glenn Greenwald, who had spent years expounding on how much he wanted to end torture, decided that the most important thing for him to do was to repeat the Republicans' false talking point that Nancy Pelosi had been briefed by the CIA, so therefore the Democrats lacked the moral standing to fight that fight.
Yeah, the Sec’y just asserted that there is no accountability or review necessary at the State Dep’t. No matter what happens. Only an old stick-in-the-mud would care about what actually happened. Look forward, not back, my friend.
Tinbox, Secretary of State Clinton was the one who ordered the State Department Inspector General to investigate the attack in Benghazi and issue a report - a report that resulted in several high-level State Department figures "spending more time with their families."
To accuse her of not wanting investigations or accountability is ludicrous. She wasn't dismissing the necessity of investigating what happened; she was dismissing the necessity of investigating Susan Rice's talking points.
What’s interesting, if not new, is how reckless the Rs are in pushing an internal advantage.
Their behavior on Benghazi reminds me of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The President really did cheat on his wife with a young woman in the Oval Office. The Republicans really did have an issue they could use to score some points and make him look bad - but that wasn't enough for them. They had to blow it up into a literal impeachment, and the public ended up rallying around Clinton out of disgust with their overreach.
There really were some problems in the State Department's offices in Benghazi; a number of people in senior positions in the State Department had to leave after the Inspector General's report came out. The Republicans really could have made some hay out of this, but instead, they've grossly overreached again.
But Bill, how does Johnson's blather about Susan Rice's talking points "advance the dialogue regarding necessary measures that should have been in place, and that should be in place in the future?"
You do know that that was what Hillary was chastising him about, right?
There used to be a time when Senators looked down on the House of Representatives because of behavior like Johnson's.
From # 7. Just calling all Salafi groups “al-Qaeda” is propaganda.
It's interesting to me how this bit of propaganda, once the sole province of the right, became popular among some so-called-anti-imperialist leftists, the moment the U.S. declined to back up the cooperative oil dictator in Libya.
Oddly enough, I see many people simultaneously insisting that al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula isn't al Qaeda, but every Islamist in Libya is.
A very interesting piece.
I don't see how Obama's speech supports the idea that "Syrians are on their own." You mention both the "multilateral cooperation with allies to face security challenges" and "We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom." Both of these doctrines are completely in line with, for instance, our role in the UN mission over Libya, and can apply to Syria, too.
I find the claim that the targeted strikes against al Qaeda could lead to war with Somalia, Pakistan, or Yemen highly implausible. The governments in all three of those countries - such as they are - are supportive of those strikes. In Pakistan, it's the strikes against the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban - the large, local militias - that are controversial.
If you're not talking about those states going to war against us, but rather the underground terrorists themselves, I'm afraid that horse is out of the barn. They are already at war with us, to the extent they can be, and have been for at least a decade and a half. Since Obama ramped up the campaign of targeted strikes, their capacity to wage that war has been decimated. In 1999, they very nearly sunk an American warship. In 2001 - well, we all know what happened in 2001.
The difference between Martin Luther King and several of the commenters above: Martin Luther King congratulated and thanked Lyndon Johnson for passing the Civil Rights Act.
Because he had class, and perspective.
On #4: it wasn't only the mercury/toxics rule that has made life difficult for the coal-burners. From coal ash to particulates to mountaintop removal to the cross-state pollution regs, the EPA has passed a number of rules that disproportionately affect the coal industry.
Right; it was already illegal to pay women less for the same job.
What this bill did is make that law enforceable, after the Supreme Court had gutted it.
The Environmental Protection Agency has to its credit begun insisting on filters to prevent mercury emissions at US coal plants, imposing costs that have caused many of them to close down. They can’t compete with increasingly inexpensive natural gas and wind if they have to invest billions to avoid poisoning us.
"It will still be legal to build a coal-fired power plant; you'll just go bankrupt."
When it comes to the effect of regulation on coal plant closings, expectations are as important as the costs imposed to date. Building a power plant is a massively expensive project, and they have to run for a long time to make that money back. Even if building a new coal plant is still viable under existing regulations, the expectation that it will be less profitable in the future can cause the power companies to shy away.
Shorter John Wilson: all of those people look alike to me.
The USA may not supply al-Nusra, but they encourage their allies in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf autocracies, and in Turkey to give all manner of support to radicals in Syria. One could accuse the US gov’t of playing the role of Bart Simpson, but gone global: “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove anything!”
One could, on must stronger grounds, accuse you of inventing a story out of whole cloth, realizing you have nothing to back it up, and then coming up with an excuse for why a lack of evidence shouldn't be used to rebut you.
The use of the term and concept "objectively pro-" is as morally and intellectually bankrupt when used to slur people you dislike, as it was when it was used to slur opponents of the Iraq War.
Indeed.
Here is the New York Times story about the U.S. attempt to "steer" weaponry away from the Salafists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Here is a story about the U.S. declaring the al-Nusra Front, the main Salafist faction in Syria, a terrorist organization.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/11/world/la-fg-syria-terror-blacklist-20121212
Whether you’re burning coal, natural gas, or a petroleum derivative, you are bringing up ancient carbon that has been isolated from the biosphere for millions of years and injecting it into the atmosphere.
But in massively different amounts. It's the levels that matter here, remember?
If drilling for natural gas was "stopped. Period" as you recommend, zero (0) of the reduction in coal capacity would have occurred, and billions of tons more of carbon dioxide, as well as mercury, would have been released into the atmosphere. To advocate for that is the most irresponsible thing an environmentalist can do.
I'm an optimist, and agree that we can "do it all with renewables" eventually, but it's going to take a generation to get there, and the coal plants need to close yesterday.
Also, on the point about the release of methane during frackinig: that is something that can be controlled. Proper techniques, enforced by regulation, can eliminate, or almost eliminate, such releases. It is possible to get natural gas without those methane emissions.
Burning coal, on the other hand, cannot be done without releasing all of that carbon dioxide.
The problems with fracking need to be handled through regulation. The problems with coal cannot be handled except by getting rid of coal.
I attended a presentation from a solar company called Vivant that has an interesting model for overcoming the funding and logistical problems that have impeded residential PV proliferation.
This company doesn't sell solar panels. They continue to own the panels that they install on your roof, and sell you the electricity they produce at a lower cost than the electricity from the power company. The homeowner doesn't put down any money up front, and is not responsible for maintaining or replacing the solar panels, leaving that job to the company. After 20 years, when the solar panels are degraded and obsolete, Vivant will either give them to the homeowner to keep using, getting free power from them, or replace them with an updated system.
Apparently, Vivant is now on track to become the largest commercial power company in the US within a few years.
I'm surprised to hear that, because Australia is so much more urban than the US.
Is their energy mix much more coal-intensive? Do they rely on brown coal?
Google ” methane, fracking” and you’ll find lots of article that indicate much higher release of methane from fracking than had previously been suspected.
Sure, but the leap from that to "therefore, natural gas may be as bad as coal" is a vast one, and I'm going to need more than a lecture about ideological purity before I credit that assertion.
But Burning natural gas instead of coal will not save us from a climate disaster.
Switching from coal plants to natural gas plants is one early step in an extended process that will save us from a climate disaster. It's a transitional step, not a permanent fix.
You know what else won't save us from climate disaster? Pretending that we can shut down all the coal plants next Tuesday without a replacement. Switching from coal to natural gas won't get us all the way to where we need to be, but it will do a lot more than putting all of your energy into talking talking talking about "drastic action" that wont happen.
Specially bad news is that 1.4 gigawatts of new, dirty coal power was brought online in 2012 in the US.
Just so everyone is clear: that is a gross figure. During 2012, 9 gigawatts of old, dirtier coal power was shut down (8.5% of the total coal-fired capacity in the United States), representing a net reduction of 7.6 gigawatts. Even this figure underestimates the net gain, because the plants being shut down are much less efficient than the new ones.
In coming years, coal-fired capacity is projected to be retired at an even faster rate, while the construction of new plants will drop to zero before the end of this decade.
I notice that there is no link provided to support that claim that methane releases from natural gas drilling "may" make the replacement of coal-fired power plants with gas-fired plants "a wash."
"May" is such a useful word.
What "betrayal of the Kurds" are you talking about?
The problem with this theory, Roland, is that the West has not been working with the al-Nusra Front. In fact, the U.S. has been trying to keep weapons out of their hands, and has declared them to be a terrorist organization.
I don't think the FSA and SNC should be getting on our case about the al-Nusra front anymore, or vouching for their good faith.
Sure, fine, they're terrific soldiers - a lot of good that's going to do the revolution if those terrific soldiers are off beating up the Kurds.
I hate to break it to you, Mark, but the public never heard of cared the slightest bit about the ginned up "Fast and Furious" nonscandal.
That's a fine argument against anyone who is proposing to actually ban all guns, but the vast majority of anti-massacre proposals come up well short of that.
For instance, banning high-capacity magazines. You say that bans never work, but I can't help but notice that absinthe sales in the United States were virtually unheard of during the period when it was banned, but vodka and gin were still legal.
You point out that murderers would have no problems violating gun laws; how about federally-licenses gun dealers? They virtually all comply very strictly with the law - they're honest businessmen, and trying to make a quick buck on an illegal deal puts their whole business in danger. We have heavily-regulated liquor stores all over the country, and I've never been offered cocaine by a liquor store clerk. Not once.
To be fair, most of that $5 trillion was spent on the Iraq War, which had nothing to do with actually trying to stop terrorism.
The snake-oil salesmen just put "Stops Terrorism!" on the label because that's what the public wanted to buy at the time.
If you look at the countries-of-origin of the terrorists who have launched attacks on the United States, you'll find that almost all of them come from countries, like Bahrain, that are long standing, but undemocratic, allies of the United States. Everyone loves the theory that military action causes terrorism, but there are virtually no terror attacks carried out against the United States by Iraqis, Iranians, Lebanese, Libyans, Afghans, or residents of other countries against whom we have been at war. Instead, they come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the Emirates - countries where we've never waged war, but which have oppressive governments that we choose to back.
Obviously, the United States has a national security interest in having a Persian Gulf naval base, but at what cost? Getting into bed with these nasty little dictatorships in the Middle East harms our national security more than it helps.
Yeah, when you find yourself casting North Korea as the victim of aggression, you took a wrong turn somewhere.
North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba are in imminent danger of being attacked?
You sure about that?
Thank you, Mr. Martin, but I understand all of that already. That is exactly why it would make sense for a Middle Eastern political movement which is seeking to increase its support and influence in the Arab world to put out anti-Israel rhetoric and cast its actions as part of the fight against Israel, even if Israel is not actually very important in their thinking - because, as you way, "Most of the Arab world..." feels as you describe, and tapping into that feeling is a way to appeal to them.
"This is what Osama bin Laden had to say about the motivation for the attack on 9/11."
That's nice. What did George Bush have to say about the motivation for the attack on Iraq? Shall we take him at his word, too?
Again, it's best to look at actions, not words, when trying to understand political leaders. Bin Laden hated the Saudi government, and carried out no end of attacks against the Saudi government and royal family. He said he hated the United States, and carried out numerous attacks on the United States. He said he hated Israel, and...attacked New York?
Mark,
The absence of attacks alleged to be from al Qaeda since 2004 strongly suggests that that attack was not conducted by them. Their m.o. is to keep hitting the same target. "Connected with" is a vague phrase, and while I have no doubt that there are Palestinian factions that have good relations with AQ, that's quite a bit different from AQ itself conducting operations or being in the country.
As for the Mauriania embassy attack, remember that the Pakistani militants who conducted the Mumbai attack went after a Jewish community center - yet that was clearly an attack on India.
We've seen what it looks like when al Qaeda goes after a country, and it's not two ambiguous operations in a decade, without statements taking credit.
Prof. Cole's description there reminded by of the film "A Perfect Storm." That, too, was an attempt to reverse-engineer actual human experience from a dry, factual, event-driven narrative.
I also can't help but notice that, for all of bin Laden's talk about how deeply and profoundly he cares about the Israel-Palestine conflict, al Qaeda has never launched attacks against Israel.
Sometimes, political leaders trying to win the support of a broader public feign concern over an issue that they know that public cares about. It's best not to take politicians at the word, but to look at their actual records to figure out their intent and belief system.
I can't help but notice that zero of the 9/11 attackers, organizer, facilitators, and planners were Palestinian.
What really jumps out at me about those omissions is that they would have made the plot more interesting. KSM throwing the torturers off the courier's scent while he was being tortured, and then the decision to look at that courier again when the new administration came into power - that's one of the most interesting details of the entire story. Similarly, when the OLC memos came out, one detail that emerged was that the CIA interrogators, who had been using legitimate methods, reported that a detainee was cooperating, but because he wasn't providing any intelligence linking bin Laden to Iraqi WMDs, Dick Cheney ordered him to be tortured, and he stopped cooperating. Again, that's a very interesting plot twist!
Ditto with the transfer of resources and attention to Iraq. As you say, they already have the unit complaining that they've been denied resources. That's an important piece of information, that helps to establish the environment under which they are working. Why not flesh it out?
If these details had been left out for aesthetic reasons, I could understand that, but in reality, those details would have made it a better movie. They would have made the plot more interesting and the characters more impressive. It's difficult to believe, then, that the decision to excise them was anything but political.
I don't know if this is new desperation. It looks a lot like the same old desperation.
You seem to have confused the ethnic, secession-minded Tuareg rebellion with the religious, jihadi campaign to take over the country.
OK, walk me through this: the Tauregs have been beaten by the Wahabbi-backed fundamentalists, and this is because the Tauregs have Gadhaffi's heave weaponry. Is that what you're saying?
It appears that the majority of commenters are ignoring what Professor Cole wrote, as well as the stories he linked to, is a rush to use a pre-positioned story line that, while it doesn't do a good job matching up with the facts, tells them what they want to hear.
First of all, Lyndie England was one of eleven soldiers convicted at Abu Ghraib, so discussing the scandal in terms of what she, individually, came up with is unhelpful. The record from the case shows pretty clearly that she was going along with her scumbag superior/slash boyfriend, Charles Graner, who was a corrections officer in his civilian life - which has all sorts of wonderful implications.
Secondly, you move the goalposts pretty dramatically when go from "she was just following orders" to "they learned their techniques somewhere." The night-squad freak show involving England and Graner, which got all of the attention, seems to have been a distinct, although related, scandal from the authorized, professional "enhanced interrogation" practices that the actual interrogators from the CIA and military engaged in. Noting that one of these things happened doesn't eliminate the existence of the other.
Watching this interview, it struck me how quickly things are moving.
To take one example, look at Turkey's relationship with its neighbors. Just a few years ago, they were on excellent terms with Syria, Israel, and Iran. Now...not so much, and it's not because there has been some major political reorientation in Ankara.
Many suicidal acts people commit are half-hearted. It is easy to give up halfway through the pile of pills, or change your mind and open the door of the garage in which you're running your car.
Pulling the trigger of a gun, on the other hand, is a much more definitive proposition. The use of a firearm turns many "attempted suicides" into actual suicides.
The 2012 NDAA contains no language defining a war zone.
The 2012 NDAA does not define the continental US as a war zone.
It has not been proved that Anwar al-Awlaki, and American citizen killed by a US drone in Yemen, did more than threaten the US.
Proved to whom? Abdulmuttallab testified in court that Awlaki helped organize the attempted bombing of an airliner filled with passengers on Christmas Day 2009.
There are better examples to make your point.
This is an excellent comment, with one weakness: Clinton launched cruise missile attacks on al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in August 1998, in response to the bombings of two American embassies in Africa.
Still, your larger point remains.
There are, in fact, some pretty good reasons to believe that surrounding Iran was a motivating factor in why the Bush administration (and the Republicans to this day) want to maintain a permanent presence in Afghanistan. There's their states desire to carry out a series of wars against the "Axis of Evil" countries (plus Syria), for one.
But more importantly, there's the screaming need to come up with some explanation for actions that can't be explained by the initial war goals - routing al Qaeda and toppling the regime that backed them. I agree that oil, minerals, and China don't fit the bill, Bill, but what does that leave?
There is every reason to think we went in to engage in the (admittedly foolish) game of “nation-bulding” in order to create a nation and government that would maintain a bulwark against terrorism springing from its territory.
That's a plausible reason, too.
Alert! Alert!
Positive information posted about United States!
Woot woot woot! This is not a drill, people!
Get to those keyboards now now now!
This will not stand. As God is my witness, this will not stand!
You talk about this like we blew a tire, and it's nobody's fault and everybody's. The Bush Administration got bogged down in counter-insurgency, and they did so because they made a policy choice that they intended to made Afghanistan a client state and maintain it within the American military sphere. Moving into counter-insurgency was not a natural outcome of The successful effort to oust the Taliban and Mullah Omar, and to deprive Al-Qaeda of a safe-haven in Afghanistan. Kabul fell to an Afghan army that was receiving air support and some special forces help from a few hundred Americans. There was something else going on in the Bush administration's head that led them to determine counter-insurgency was necessary, and we needed to have tens of thousands of troops in the country.
I don't know how you can say all of that. There is clearly some other explanation necessary to explain the Bush administration's actions.
You wrote exactly the same thing about Obama's managed withdrawal from Iraq, JT, and you were dead wrong.
What do I suggest? I suggest putting the responsibility for planning and conducting the withdrawal in the hands of competent professionals who, unlike some, don't consider it a virtue to have exactly the same answer to every question. YOU are going to criticize ME for being attached to a narrative? JT, you project more than an opera singer.
I suggest basing our strategy on the negotiated withdrawal from Iraq: a reality-based policy, setting, announcing, and clearly demonstrating a timeline for withdrawal, and giving the people on the ground a high degree of flexibility in how to plan and operate as they move down the timeline. I suggest that a withdrawal can also generate positive political results.
But mostly, JT, what I suggest is that the administration actually try to answer the question you're asking, as opposed to merely using it as a launching point for one's very favorite boilerplate. A Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? Really? You sound like a parody.
Actually, the US has been carrying out landmine removal projects in Afghanistan for almost two decades.
http://www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/othr/misc/115910.htm
There is an Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the State Department that specializes in funding these projects.
http://www.state.gov/t/pm/wra
They've spent over $100,000,000 just in Afghanistan.
Oh, and here's a cheery little tale about the Taliban beheading a mine-clearance team.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-10/mine-clearing-workers-beheaded-in-afghanistan/2789254&sa=U&ei=I8jtUJLWNanv0QHCrIGgCg&ved=0CBoQFjAC&usg=AFQjCNFMsFd1KNhs6hWAKA5e8ULz7rpJ0w
not war .. invasion
What is this even supposed to mean? Almost all wars involve invasions. Are you saying there isn't a war in Afghanistan?
what the heck was it all about, that it can end?
At this point, it's about trying to leave in a manner that doesn't produce a catastrophic power vacuum.
advanced natural gas technologies are far far cheaper than solar.
At the moment. Natural gas is unlikely to stay at this low level over the long-term, especially as demand keeps increasing, while solar prices continue to drop.
I’m told by these smarter people that I’m obviously uninformed if I don’t see the wisdom in trying to kill every “terrorist” out there before they can do anything bad to us.
Rule of thumb: in any debate, the person who makes an argument to assign to the other side is losing.
"...trying to kill every 'terrorist' out there"
"...don't think Iraqis are capable of democracy..."
"...hate the traditional family..."
etc
So far, the case for Brennan's complicity in torture looks thin and circumstantial. "Served in CIA during the torture program" sounds about right, from what I've seen so far: he worked for the agency, which is a sprawling bureaucracy with many arms, and one of them was torturing people at the direction of the White House. I haven't seen any direct evidence of his involvement, but then, the CIA isn't the most transparent bureaucracy in the world, so we can't really say at this point whether he was involved. This is concerning, but in the sense of requiring more information, as opposed to ruling him out.
We'll see how "liberal Zionists" react. It seems equally likely that the J-Street crowd will take this opportunity to peel off some pro-Israel-but-not-Likudnik support from the AIPAC crowd.
There was no Tea Party when Obama made his initial SecDef pick, and he had quite a few priorities (ending the Iraq War, avoiding catastrophic collapse in Afghanistan) that were more important at that moment in time.
And maybe Hegel would not have been such a fan of the flying killer robots. There is only a tiny fringe in American politics, among the far left and the libertarians, who oppose using drones against al Qaeda. Chuck Hagel is almost certainly not among them.
they’re fast, cheap and out of control.
You left out "effective," and they're perfectly in control. Your complaint isn't that they are failing to achieve their purpose, or that they are running wild and going beyond that purpose. Your complaint is that you don't agree with their purpose, and you're using the term "out of control" the same way a libertarian might use it when discussing Medicaid.
Hezbollah needed to be disarmed and the Israelis were the only ones who could do it
Could they?
Sometimes, your best friend is the one who takes away your keys when you've been drinking so you don't wreck your car.
before the war’s inception everyone from Scott Ritter to Pat Buchanan had outed the WMD lies, so what was the excuse?
It seems pretty clear to me that the Bush administration lied to Congress about the WMD intelligence, about the al Qaeda/Iraq links, and about its intentions, even more shamelessly than it lied to the American public. If you go back and look at the statements of half-hearted supporters like Hagel or John Kerry, they seem to be dropping hints that they know things the general public does not, that makes the case for the war stronger.
Why is the pro-Israeli lobby so upset that Hagel used the term “Jewish lobby”
There is some unfortunate history there. A term like "Jewish Lobby" carries some unintended baggage, some echoes of old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
But mostly, it's just a cheap shot that helps them cast Hagel's actual foreign policy positions in a worse light.
No need for Chuck Hagel to perform Maoist self-criticism regarding his previous statements regarding gay and lesbian rights. He has already apologized.
He apologized for one rude comment about an Ambassadorial nominee, and that is all to the good.
That's not the same thing as renouncing his previous views on issues of substance, such as allowing gay people to serve in the military - a little matter which is, in fact, somewhat important for the next Secretary of Defense.
I have to disagree, Bill. Weakening the conservatives and damaging their credibility on foreign policy remains a top-tier objective for this country's well-being.
Sure, Seth9 - if you are deeply enmeshed in Washington politics and can tell all of the players without a scorecard. I remember when Rush Limbaugh and National Review were calling Hagel "Senator Betrayus" for his conversion during the Iraq War.
But to people who don't read about politics all day, in this most polarized of political cultures, much of that nuance is likely to be lost.
Benefit of the doubt, nothing! I want to see Hagel perform a little Maoist self-criticism session before the Armed Services committee on the issue of gay rights.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
As a Democrat, I would ideally prefer that the President select a Democrat with similar views.
This is true. On the other hand, as a Democrat, I am quite happy to see discord sown in the enemy camp. This pick is going to put the Republicans at each other's throats.
Hagel has no natural constituency, except perhaps for those who want a foreign and defense policy that is tougher on Israel and softer on Iran.
That is not an insignificant number of Americans.
Israel would be clear that Obama views the Jewish state with hostility. Iran would be clear that it has nothing serious to fear from the Obama administration.
A little perspective is in order here. "Hostility" in this sentence means "Wants to give them billions of dollars a year in aid and sell them the latest military equipment while maintaining close military and intelligence ties, but occasionally breaking with them on policy questions," while "nothing serious to fear" means "being defined as a state sponsor of terror, subject to extensive sanctions, and generally being treated as a threat to national security and potential opponent in a war."
The Defense of Marriage Act forbids the military, or any other federal department, to extend marriage benefits to same-sex married couples. It's not something that the Secretary of Defense, or anyone else in the executive branch, can do, unless the law is repealed or overturned.
That President Obama, the force behind DADT repeal, nominated him indicates to me that Obama is quite comfortable that Hagel will implement DADT repeal according to administration policy.
Think about the "optics" of Graham's outburst. Obama reaches across the aisle and nominates a Republican to be his Secretary of Defense, and the Republicans respond by calling it an "in your face" pick that foretells an "in your face" second term.
A Republican Senator. It might not be the hardest task in the world, but President Obama sure does excel at making the Republicans look like irrational, bitter extremists.
You are so right about the stakes. Hagel's appointment - just his appointment going through, never mind what he does in office - will be a huge blow for the organized Likudnik lobby, a sign of their decline, and will drive a wedge down the middle of the conservative movement.
Well, his government is losing the civil war, despite vastly outclassing the rebels in military professionalism, firepower, organization, and political organization.
That seems to suggest that the rebels have a very large base of support.
"The Pentagon-CIA cabal."
Right. The Pentagon and CIA are on such wonderful terms. Are you sure it's not a Pentagon-State Department-FBI-CIA cabal?
In 1985 the City of Philadelphia killed minors who were innocent bystanders in attempting to evict MOVE activists from a rowhouse. The city paid millions to the estates of the decedent children.
Of course, the legal standards are very different for a domestic law enforcement agency operating within the United States, and an arm of the military operating overseas.
Whittling through the loaded language and poetic flights of fancy, the answers to your questions are:
1. The U.S. actions in Yemen have had the support of the Yemeni government all along, so there's nothing novel in Saleh's replacement giving them a green light. We had the same green light from Saleh.
2. The national interest behind fighting al Qaeda and its affiliates is...far too obvious to justify even these few characters I'm wasting on this question.
3. I can't really tell what #3 is. You just put a question mark at the end of some word salad.
That the US is using that method to come up with casualty estimates after a strike, not as a standard for determining whether to launch a strike against someone.
This explanation assumes that "the drone campaign" is a single, coherent thing that is being ramped up in Yemen and ramped down in Pakistan. In reality, though, drones are just a tool, and they are being used for different purposes in different places. Whatever is driving the increase in strikes in Yemen, it probably has little to do with the decline in strikes in Pakistan, which looks to me to be driven by the winding down of the ground war in Afghanistan.
To explain the decrease in strikes in Pakistan, I would look at America policy in Afghanistan. The withdrawal has begun, and troop levels and operations have fallen across the board. The strikes in Pakistan have always fallen into two categories: strikes against militants who move back and forth across the border and engage in the ground war in Afghanistan, and strikes against senior leaders of terrorists groups. The "signature strikes" in Pakistan, as opposed to the named-target strikes, are entirely or almost entirely the former - that is, an extension of the war in Afghanistan. The decrease in these strikes, without a drop in the named-target strikes, suggests that the decrease is an expression of the U.S. winding down the "Af-Pak War," while the war against al Qaeda continues.
The paper also revealed that the administration ‘counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.’
Just a reminder that the NYT described this as a method used in bomb damage assessments after a strike, not as a standard used in targeting.
Ariel Sharon said that in 1973, not in the last ten years.
Sharon seems to have had a limited conversion of sorts later in his life.
Say what you will about the music: that's a really good deal for fresh fish.
Responding to numbers by talking about feelings is generally not a good sign.
However, fracking releases methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, so the impact on global warming of the US reduction from coal may not be as great as it seems.
I've seen too many global warming deniers respond to real numbers with a reference to some factor that they assume nobody has looked at - sunspots, cyclical changes - to find arguments like this compelling. With no quantification, just the observation that fracking can, sometimes, release some unspecified amount of carbon, it's difficult to take this seriously as a rebuttal to the actual, documented, world-leading reduction in GHG that the replacement of coal by gas has accomplished.
The economy still is struggling and hasn’t swung into high gear, and it is an open question what will happen when it does.
It isn't, really. As the economy has spent the last two years in slow-to-moderate growth mode, we haven't seen the reductions reverse, or even level off. We've seen them continue. This question seems to be quite a bit less open than the claim that methane releases undo the carbon gains of natural gas.
The recession ended over three years ago, but the reductions continue.
There was some fear that the American reductions were merely the result of the recession when, in 2010, there was a jump in emissions levels, but they dropped dramatically in 2011 and fell again in 2012, even as growth rates turned positive, indicating that there was a structural change happening, and not just a slowdown.