Drones are, of course, being used for close air support and tactical bombing in the Afghanistan War. It really doesn't make sense to talk about those strikes alongside the targeted strikes against al Qaeda, instead of talking about them as part of the Afghan War.
I was talking about the program targeting al Qaeda, which doesn't really have anything in common with the air support provided in Afghanistan, except for the equipment used.
The joint report by the Stanford International Human Rights Clinic and the New York University Global Justice Clinic
Those are always my go-to sources when I need an analysis of a military or security issue, such as whether the drone strikes against al Qaeda has eroded its capacity to engage in acts of mass-casualty terrorism against Americans.
Taking public opinion polls doesn't actually tell me anything about whether the tiny al Qaeda death cult has been made less effective as a force.
Comparing al Qaeda to Hamas or Hezbollah is deeply misguided, and not only in a moral sense.
Hezbollah is a mass political party, commanding the loyalty of millions. So is Hamas. They have a message and a program that is broadly appealing to their own people, and have achieved political legitimacy through their success in electoral politics and their ability to deliver meaningful, effective governance.
Al Qaeda probably had 1/1000th the numbers of either of those organizations at its peak. It is a small death cult, despised and hunted by the populaces of its "own" people, whom it frequently kills in acts of mass terror. It has achieved no political success anywhere, and has never delivered anything to its followers but death and destruction.
Drone operations require a fair amount of intelligence and infrastructure support from local governments and populations. This support will evaporate with increased anti-American sentiment.
So why hasn't it?
I keep seeing people threaten all sorts of terrible outcomes to the United States from the act of shooting at al Qaeda. Where are they?
In the meantime, I don't have to wait for the evidence on the other side of the ledger; I need only remember the messages found in the bin Laden compound, in which he bemoans the erosion of al Qaeda's capacity to wage its jihad because of the ongoing attrition of its leadership.
Mr. Klare writes about "If Obama says no," and "If giving the go-ahead by President Obama," but the finding that the pipeline needs is made by the Secretary of State, who must find that the program is in the national interest before allowing a cross-border pipeline.
The appointment of John Kerry, who was called "the best environmentalist in the Senate" by Al Gore and who played a prominent role in the 1992 Rio Conference, to be the next Secretary of State is a good sign.
Under American law (the War Powers Act) passed by Congress, and according to every President who has ever acted under one, and according to the U.S. Supreme Court, and under international law, an AUMF is a declaration of war.
It's true that passing an AUMF instead of an old-fashioned war declaration is intended to allow members of Congress to avoid political responsibility, but that really has nothing to do with the constitutional or legal question. An AUMF creates exactly the same legal state of war as a war declaration.
As for the rest of your comment, none of it really has anything to do with the question at hand. You just sort of went into a stream of consciousness anti-counter-terrorism riff.
I also notice the weasel-wording: enemies that the CIA can call “supporters of al-Qaeda”
Note that he won't come out and say that these people are actually al Qaeda and actually generate a threat to the United States, because he doesn't want to acknowledge that al Qaeda amounts to a legitimate threat. And yet, he doesn't want to commit to the opposite position, either.
This whole argument is based upon asserting that there is a threat produced that it is in America's interest to avoid, and yet Realist doesn't want to acknowledge that threat, while still using it to threaten.
Obama should end it all before going out of office.
Indeed.
But let's note that this is not merely an administrative step; it involves actually finishing the job.
I sincerely hope that Obama ends this war, in the manner described in the post below (decimating core al Qaeda), and then closes the door on this chapter of history.
But I argue that the AUMF is itself unconstitutional, since it went beyond calling for hunting down and punishing the plotters of 9/11 to creating a class of persons (“al-Qaeda members”) who are objects of a Bill of Attainder.
Every war declaration does this. When we declared war on Japan, it wasn't just the forces who took part in the Pearl Harbor attack who were covered, but any member of their armed forces, including people who didn't join until 1945.
The difficulties in identifying in practice who belongs in the category are an important policy point, but they don't really raise any constitutional issue. In every war, there have been people who were not unformed front-line troops, people who acted in a covert manner, who posed identification issues, but who were nonetheless legitimately covered by the declaration of war (or force authorization). It is novel that this war consists almost entirely of that sort of enemy, but that category of person, and the practical difficulties they raise, are nothing new.
Is it that he was in the Directorate of Intelligence and it was the Directorate of Operations guys who were waterboarding? Isn’t he implying that there are black ops being run by rogue parts of the agency that aren’t open to influence from even deputy executive directors?
Likewise, LAT notes that “Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said the interrogation program was ‘corrupted by personnel with pecuniary conflicts of interest.’” Hunh? Somebody was making money off the torture?
We've known since the OLC memos, if not before, that the waterboarding was conducted by private contractors, not CIA employees. The picture that seems to be emerging is that it was, in fact, a rogue operation run out of the DCI's office that bypassed the Directorates, and was answerable only to the Director and the White House.
I think there is a better than 50/50 change he will. I also think there will be a big political fight with Congress if he does. What happens when the President says we've won the war, and Congress wants to keep fighting?
The actions in Mali aren't being carried out under the AUMF, but at the invitation of the Malian government.
If any counter-terror military actions (as opposed to law enforcement actions) take place in Yemen, Pakistan, or Somalia after the war is ended, they would have to be done at the behest of the local governments, too.
Most of the drone strikes have been carried out as close air support or tactical bombing in support of the conventional ground war in Afghanistan. Those strikes aren't intended to go after senior al Qaeda leaders, but like any other air support in a war, to strike the enemy fighting the war. Those are the vasty majority of the "signature strikes" that have been conducted, and they don't really have anything to do with the "disposition matrix" or the doctrine put forward in the recently-leaded white paper.
It's a mistake to conflate air strikes in the Af-Pak War with those in the war against al Qaeda, merely because the same equipment is used. We can, indeed, talk about targeting senior al Qaeda commanders, because there actually is a program to target them being conducted - in addition to the strikes, whether from drones, piloted jets, or helicopters, that target ground forces in (or entering) Afghanistan.
That said, the unique challenges in identifying the enemy in this war are a real concern. The answer is for Congress to apply vigorous oversight, using both its power of the purse and its war-declaring authority to demand cooperation from the executive.
This isn't to say that the legislature should take on the role of reviewing individual targets, but they should be reviewing how the executive is going about its business.
There have been a couple orders of magnitude fewer civilians killed in the war against al Qaeda (the "drone program") than in the iraq War, the Afghan War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or the first Gulf War.
To single out civilian casualties as something that makes "the drone war" uniquely bad or legally shaky is strange.
Shamsi argues that the Obama administration is already relying on an overbroad interpretation of the AUMF to justify strikes against alleged militants in Yemen or Somalia without demonstrating precisely how they are associated with al-Qaida or engaged in anti-U.S. hostilities.
That's a rather implausible argument. The conspiracy to bomb a jetliner over Detroit (the Underwear Bomber plot) originated in Yemen and was conducted al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula. The bomber testified that Anwar al-Awlaki was an operational commander of the group, and helped to organize the attack. Later, Awlaki was killed when a drone strike blew up the car he war riding in. Also riding in the car was Samir Khan, who was part of the core al Qaeda organization in Pakistan. Given that set of facts, it's pretty implausible to claim that AQAP does not represent a threat to the United States, or that it is not associated with the bin Laden/Zawahiri "core al Qaeda" group.
I do believe that on the present course, there will come a tipping point – a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that al Qaeda as we know it, the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed.
This is very similar to something Leon Panetta said when he became Secretary of Defense, which was echoed by David Patraeus:
The United States is “within reach” of defeating al-Qaeda and is targeting 10 to 20 leaders who are key to the terrorist network’s survival, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday during his first trip to Afghanistan since taking charge at the Pentagon....“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them, because I do believe that if we continue this effort that we can really cripple al-Qaeda as a threat to this country,” he told reporters on his plane en route to Afghanistan. “I’m convinced,” he added, “that we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.”
Johnson and Panetta are laying down the same marker: the war against al Qaeda will end, our efforts transition from armed conflict to law enforcement, when al Qaeda is defeated to the point where they cease to be capable of being a strategic threat to this country, and revert to be an ordinary terrorist organization. This fits in with the observation about the end of "core al Qaeda," in that it is the global scale of the organization that elevates its capabilities and reach beyond the level of run-of-the-mill terror groups like the Red Brigades or the PFLP.
Ah, yes, drone strikes in the rich territories of rural Yemen, Somalia, and the rural areas of Pakistan are about "corporate profits."
Obviously, a desire to prevent al Qaeda from launching terrorist attacks against us is so utterly implausible as a reason for the strikes that there must be some economic motive.
I know: we're launching drone strikes into Yemen as the first part of a long-term plan to steal their nothing. Added to the nothing that is so prevalent in Somalia, it adds up to a rich prize indeed.
Under this document would it be lawful for a foreigner to conduct a lethal operation against senior operational leaders of the United States or “associated forces” on the grounds that such leaders operate beyond the reach of international law?
Is that "foreigner" a sovereign government that has declared war on the United States?
Because, if so, then yes, it would be lawful to conduct a lethal operation against senior operational commanders of the United States' fighting forces. Of course it would.
Why would you think I was an operational commander of al Qaeda?
Do you have even the slightest intelligence to back that up?
Do you think that 100 people in the executive branch, reviewing intelligence, are going to come to the conclusion that I am an operational commander of al Qaeda?
Your assertion that there is "NO REVIEW" is utterly belied by the widely-reported facts of how these reviews are carried out. Did you never see the widely-discussed New York Times article discussing this?
You expend a great deal of emotion, but you consistently garble the facts.
I suppose, Brian, that a Black Hawk Down operation is always technically an option, no matter how long the odds, or how bloody it could turn out to be.
You ask about cost-benefit analysis. It's estimated that over 1000 Somalis were killed in Mogadishu that day. Shouldn't that enter into your cost-benefit analysis?
But what does any of this have to do with the rule of law? The rule of law doesn't require that we capture people we are at war against.
In fact, Nathaniel, I did read the white paper. Every single instance in which it identifies who may be targeted uses the phrase "operational commander of al Qaida and associated groups."
Every.
Single.
One.
The white paper does not assert, ever, anywhere, the right of "someone in the White House" to order someone who is not "an operational commander of al Qaida or an associated organization" to be killed.
Go ahead, champ, quote me some language from the white paper that demonstrates I am misstating what appears in it.
Ah, so the arguments about juries, indictments, crimes, statutes, bills of attainder, judicial review, and outlaws are all about war powers, and not criminal law?
You sure about that, Nathaniel?
You're clearly very emotional right now. Maybe once you cool off a bit, you can another run at that question.
Awlaki was beyond the reach of the law, in a remote part of Yemen controlled by hostile militias.
Drone strikes are not used to replace captures and arrests; they are used when capture and arrest are not available. That's why they are happening in remote areas of Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
What ever widening war in geography? One of the very first actions the Bush administration took after the September 20 AUMF was to send Special Forces to the Philippines. Special Forces have been operative in North Africa since 2002. Bush launched a drone strike in Yemen in 2002.
Where is this war being fought in 2013 that is was not being fought in 2002?
Now, a U.S. Citizen can just disagree with U.S. policy, associate (used to be a freedom) with people someone (we don’t know who) has deemed to be undesirable, and now that person can be legally killed on the order of someone in the White House.
This is not even remotely accurate, and has nothing to do with the doctrine put forward in the white paper.
1. The drone strikes are not criminal sanctions. They are not exercises in the police power, but the war power. There has never been a requirement for judicial authorization to shoot at the enemy during a war. Just because air strikes have become a great deal more accurate does not turn them into criminal penalties.
2. Same as #1. Authorizing force against member of al Qaeda is no more a "bill of attainder" than authorizing force against the Kaiser's army. Again, just because air strikes have become a great deal more accurate does not turn them into criminal sanctions.
3. In the prosecution of a war, and the selection of targets, the executive has always had the war-making power. "Judge, jury, and executioner" are terms used to describe criminal proceedings deriving from the police power.
4. Same at 1, 2, and 3. Enemies can be shot at in war not because they are outlaws, but because they are the enemy. When a tank crew shoots at another tank, are they declaring them to be outlaws? Of course not. Their actions has nothing to do with legal status at all. Again, just because air strikes in a war have become more accurate does not transform them into criminal sanctions.
5. Thank you for your opinion that using military force against al Qaeda is "insane on the face of it." This is a policy dispute to be settled through our democratic system. Good luck!
This is false. One can be both a legitimate military target and a criminal subject to arrest and criminal charges. Think about all of the uniformed German officers tried at Nuremberg. Prior to capture, any of them could have been shot at, just like every other soldier in the army.
To claim that one cannot be both a soldier and a criminal is to argue that nothing done in the prosecution of a war can be illegal.
In a secret Justice Department memo, the administration claims it has legal authority to assassinate U.S. citizens overseas even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the United States.
No, but it does require that there is intelligence indicating that they belong to an organization against which Congress has declared war (the always-inconvenient September 20, 2001 AUMF).
Anyone belonging to the military of a power against whom Congress has declared was has always been considered a legitimate target, even if that individual is not, at the moment of attack, engaged in hostilities, or poses an imminent threat. How many airplane mechanics and mail clerks do you think have been killed by air strikes?
"AUMF references persons involved in planning and carrying out 9/11."
The actual text of the AUMF: Section 2 - Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
All member of that al Qaeda organization are covered by the authorization, regardless of when they joined, just as any member of the Japanese armed forces would be covered by the December 1941 war declaration, even if they joined in 1945.
Another possible explanation for the Pakistani government's relative quiet about those: this series of strikes may have been targeting al Qaeda figures, as opposed to cross-border fighters (or their commanders), who tend to have friends in the ISI.
As the drawdown in Afghanistan continues, the ratio of counter-terror strikes to air support for the Af-Pak War is going to rise.
What a stupid argument. A declaration of war loses the force of law after a given amount of time? Even if hostilities are ongoing on both sides throughout the time period? I defy you to cite a single law or treaty that expresses that doctrine.
Or you could do what you usually do: throw around some insults and hope nobody notices the difference.
The coal-vs.-gas figures, showing that natural gas produces half as much CO2 as coal, are per unit of energy produced, not unit of potential energy, so the incomplete burning of coal wouldn't come into it.
Once again - and see if you can follow this time - The recently-announced investigation into the legality of drone strikes by the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, for instance, isn’t even including that question in his report.
Answering a question put to him a media appearance is not the same thing as including that subject in his report.
Kindly make an effort to read, and understand what you just read, before you start throwing around accusations and doing your always-inappropriate touchdown dance.
Like the killing of 16 year old American Abdulrahman al-Awlaki?
No, because he was not targeted. He was killed accidently when he happened to go to meet with his father's al Qaeda buddies when they were being targeted.
To write a story about that strike and not mention that the target was Ibrahim al-Banna is, perhaps, the most dishonest piece of propaganda I have ever witnessed.
Anything the administration does in support of indigenous democracy is weak and late and empty, except when it rises to a certain level like in Libya and Syria, at which point the strength of American support is just proof that the movement isn't really about indigenous democracy at all. And also, hey, look over there. The U.S. didn't really make an unprecedented break with a core regional military ally in Egypt because Syria. No, wait, that's out of date now, so Bahrain.
There is not set of facts that will get you to stray from your narrative. This isn't an honest effort to understand and describe what is happening; it's an effort to spin it.
The original White House response to the Cairo protests was to stand by Mubarak.
The original White House response was to put pressure on Mubarak to give in to the protesters' demands and negotiate a nonviolent solution.
But so what? We're now talking about whether the White House's support for the mass movement that toppled a close security ally was fast enough and strong enough. Does that sound like the Cold War to you? Does that sound like the Bush White House's response to the lawyers' protest against Musharrif? Can you name one single case during the Cold War in which the U.S. government worked to encourage the military of an allied country to refuse orders to crush an uprising? Even one? Repeatedly moving the goal posts so you can keep saying "not good enough" isn't the point. The question is about similarity to Cold War policies, and there is none.
The White House is still standing behind Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Yes, the White House has not completely abandoned the concept of national interest, just moved away from it. Again, this is moving the goal posts.
The first White House statement on the Honduran coup was weak and non-committal.
Oh noes, it took three whole days before they denounced the illegal coup! You know, just like the 1956 Guatemalan coup...except, you know, exactly the opposite.
So, yes, the White House sometimes supports democracy when it feels it must.
The United States was one of the first nations in the world to recognize the revolutionary government in Tunisia that overthrew our former ally. I wonder, do you they felt that they "must" because of Tunisia's awesome military might, or because of the weight it throws around in international trade?
On the question of proportionality, which is the essence of her argument:
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's numbers, there have been fewer people killed in a decade of drone strikes against al Qaeda* than were killed by al Qaeda on the morning of September 11.
It's tough to argue that that represents a disproportionate response.
*The total number of deaths from drone strikes is higher, but many of those were killed in close-air-support and tactical strikes as part of the conventional war in Afghanistan.
With all due respect to the "Research Professor International Dispute Resolution," not even the UN claims that the attacks by al Qaeda do not provide legitimate cause for self-defense under the UN Charter.
The recently-announced investigation into the legality of drone strikes by the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, for instance, isn't even including that question in his report.
The Iraq War is much better-understood as being about bases than oil, fine. We wanted "an ally in the war on terror" from which we could "project power throughout the region," and we needed to relocate the troops from those Saudi bases.
This does not change the fact that it was carried out for imperial, geo-political purposes.
The most scary aspect of this is how far will extrajudicial assassination go?
If it goes beyond targeting enemy commanders in a declared war, it will be a problem.
When is it that the central legal and moral principle never finds its way into the discussion of these strikes? Yes, Mark, in a war, you are allowed to shoot the enemy. No, this does not violated the Constitution or international law.
This would have been an excellent piece if it was written a decade ago. I suppose it is one of the inevitablities of age that one is slower to recognize changes when they happen at 90 than if they had happened at 40.
In what universe is it forbidden to say that the Iraq War wasn't about spreading democracy?
In what universe is the phrase "losing China" never challenged?
Where is the freak-out about "losing Latin America?" That region has made the greatest movement away from the American sphere of influence of any in the world since the end of the Cold War, and the reaction of the political class has been close to imperceptible. There is a small, determined cadre of neoconservatives, such as some of the National Review writers, who are running around with their hair on fire, trying to get us to care about the leftist governments in South America, and their efforts have been a complete failure. If Chomsky's theory that it is 1949 forever were true, shouldn't we be seeing something similar to the "Who lost China?" hearings about Brazil and Bolivia? Is it even remotely possible that any Cold War administration would have denounced the coup in Honduras and slapped sanctions on them until they replaced the coup regime with a democratically-elected president?
How can one explain the claim that "every administration...support(s) democracy only if it conforms to certain strategic and economic interests," given this administration's response to the Egyptian Arab Spring? I wonder, what exactly were our strategic and economic interests in seeing a democratic overthrow of our core regional military ally?
In the 1980s, Noam Chomsky was one of the most insightful critics of Cold War-era foreign policy. In the second decade of the 21st century, he remains so.
This is mostly right. That Congress expressly invoked its war powers should make that clear enough.
I have to question the claim that al Qaeda targets are being selected for their political leadership instead of their operational leadership. Awlaki was making his little YouTube videos in Yemen for years, but it was only when he went over to the operational side that we began shooting at him.
And also the claim that terrorism is the tool of "the world's poor." Bin Laden was fabulously rich, so much so that he got his start providing funds, from himself and his rich Saudi friends, for the Afghan insurgency. None of al Qaeda's leadership, and none of the suicide pilots of of 9/11, were po 'boys.
Are not the contradictions in US foreign policy creating a dilemma for it?
It's not our foreign policy that creates this dilemma. There would be a popular uprising including mainly liberal and nationalist elements, which includes anti-American international jihadis, regardless of what the U.S. does.
Obama's foreign policy, which seems to consist mainly of trying to steer weaponry away from the jihadis and towards the more democratic and pro-western elements, is an effort to deal with this dilemma.
The Arab Spring uprisings have consistently generated this dilemma for the United States, and American foreign policy in this area seems to consist mainly of reacting to events beyond our control.
Obama’s main form of foreign policy interventionism is a) sanctions (e.g. Iran) and b) drones, as in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
I question whether the war against al Qaeda - the context in which the drone strikes are taking place - is properly considered "foreign policy."
When the U.S. or one of its allies arrests an al Qaeda operative overseas, is that "foreign policy?" What about an attempted arrest raid that turns into a firefight? What about the raid on the Abbottobad compound?
The term "foreign policy" generally refers to geo-politics, and the use of force against al Qaeda - ranging all the way from quiet arrests to drone strikes - doesn't seem to be carried out in the pursuit of geo-political objectives. The strikes in Pakistan, and the hostility they produce from the Pakistani government, actually seem to run counter to American geopolitical objectives - which should make the point that they are being driven by other considerations.
At the same time, you don't see the types of targeted drone strikes* that are being carried out against the al Qaeda leadership being used in the pursuit of any other foreign policy objectives the administration is working on.
*A "drone" is just a piece of equipment, and are used in many different ways. We wouldn't conflate sending someone to shoot a foreign head of state with an infantryman laying down suppressive fire with a machine gun in a war zone just because they both use bullets, and we shouldn't let the equipment define the meaning of the mission in the case of unmanned aerial vehicles, either. There were drones hitting artillery batteries during the active fighting in Misrata, but that's quite a bit different from blowing up a car full of terrorists driving to a secret meeting in Yemen.
An outright ban on spending money to do X is, de facto, an outright ban on doing X.
Have you ever had any involvement in the management of federal grants? If you aren't allowed to use federal funds to do X, you are not even allowed to do X in a building whose utility bills are partially paid with federal funds.
Obama lost this fight. Guantanamo is going stay open for as long as the war goes on. Closing this office is the acknowledgment of a political reality that happened years ago.
This moves the fight to ending the war. We need an exit strategy not just from Afghanistan, but from the war against al Qaeda, for Gitmo to close.
When we're talking about the really important bad actors in the mortgage meltdown, we're talking about huge banks whose "investors" are the retirement portfolios of hundreds of millions of ordinary individuals, pension accounts, and municipalities, who have zero operative control over those banks. I don't see how punishing them, people and institutions who are also the ones who suffered the most from this disaster, is going to solve the problem.
Talking in terms of regulatory frameworks and enforcement, as you do here, seems to be a more productive path than trying to bootstrap unprovable individual prosecutions out of these cases against the banks.
Most of what was done to cause the mortgage meltdown did not involve individuals violating criminal statutes.
The problem is, being able to prove that HSBC violated the law is not the same thing as being able to prove that an individual corporate director or manager at HSBC committed an act that violated the law.
Criminal prosecutions of individuals require the government to prove that the defendant committed a specific overt act, and that that act violated a specific statute.
It would be a violation of the rule of law, not an upholding of it, to convict a person without being able to meet that standard.
Thanks, Bill, but it's hardly my observation. Hans Morganthau was trying to get the communism-obsessed Cold War U.S. political class to understand this back in the late 40s. It's too bad it didn't work.
"We're going to support the international socialist revolution, comrades...starting in those countries that just happen to lie between Germany and Russia. Workers of the world unite!"
I imagine you have just as much evidence for your claim "people actually think the likes of the Jabhat al-Nusra are the good guys" than you do for the claim that those are Turkish tanks.
Here's a story about the U.S. State Department putting the Front on the list of international terrorist organizations.
Huh? Russia is "reacting" to NATO intervention in Syria. Syria has been a Soviet/Russian client state for generations, and their intervention in the Syrian Civil War predates that of any NATO power.
While we're talking about Russia and geopolitical history, how about we acknowledge the long standing Russian interest in having naval access to the Mediterranean?
Here is footage of "FSA Thugs attack Kurds with Tank." See how the barrel of the main gun has a thicker "sleeve" at the end? And see the dish-looking thing just behind and above the main gun, with the rounded back?
So the Stans, the Baltic Republics, and the other former Soviet Republicans were "Russian territory?"
Oh, boo hoo, Russia doesn't dominate its "near abroad" anymore. Truly, one of the great tragedies of history.
American bases in central Asia! Never in the bad old Communist days would the Soviets tolerated this level of threat. Yes, the Soviets never would have allowed central Asian governments to decide for themselves whether or not to host American bases. It's rather indecent of you to consider the growing independents of Russia's former colonial subjects to be a cause for mourning.
It may have started out as an indigenous revolution, by now it has turned into a civil war with one of the sides heavily armed and funded by foreign states and non-state jihadist groups.
You are referring, of course, to the Russian armaments being sent to the fascist government, and their support by Hezbollah, right?
There are reports that those tanks were not even tanks captured from the regime, but Turkish tanks.
The names Zelaya named, such as Otto Reich, are people who are no longer at the State Department, and whose ideas are on the outs with the current administration. There certainly was an American connection, but by free-lancers - by the Obama administration's opponents. Certainly, Republicans in Congress would have supported the coup. They never would have cut off foreign aid to that country until a legitimate election was held, and they never would have denounced it as an illegal coup. Fortunately, our foreign policy isn't being run by those people anymore.
The claims about the Wikileaks cables never panned out. There was certainly a full-court press put on to try to smear this Clinton State Department by people married to their favorite, unchanging narrative, but behind all of the spin, there was no "there" there.
Turkey, Israel and the United States are openly backing the Free Syrian Army for their own selfish motives – not for love of spreading democracy – but for advancement of their respective national security interests.
If you find yourself merging Turkey, Israel, and the United States into one undifferentiated blob, you've probably taken a wrong turn somewhere.
The pathology of viewing everything that happens in the MENA region as the result of the CIA is well on display in that panel discussion. Good for you for pushing back, Professor.
Especially remarkable was the claim that by not intervening, the West is transforming Syria into "another proxy killing field."
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Non-intervention is now an imperialist plot, too?
The panelist who talks about the United States' record "over several decades" is absurdly anachronistic. Helping the fall of Mubarak isn't consistent with American Cold War record. Our policies towards Tunisia and Libya aren't consistent with this "anti-democratic empire" theory. The Obama administration's opposition to the coup in Honduras is the polar opposite of our policies in the "good old days."
Things change. Allen Dulles is mouldering in his grave. People married to beloved old narratives need to catch up with new facts. If your thinking about American policy towards the Middle East assumes that American policy in 2013 is the same as in 1949, you're just telling yourself what you want to hear.
"In the last parliamentary election..." you mean the ones that large blocs of voters boycotted?
If all of the Democrats in American boycotted the next election, the Republicans would win a massive majority of votes. If you think the election results would show a fair representation of public opinion, you're missing something.
We have Iraq 2005 as a model of what happens when the "winners" ignore the reality that a large segment of the electorate boycotted the election, and conclude that they don't need to take the existence of that opposition into account.
If the events of Arab Spring are "a region-wide civil war between an Islamist and a secular worldview," then why is it that the Islamists and secular liberals keep fighting on the same side? The Muslim Brootherhood marched alongside trade unions and cosmopolitan youth in Egypt. The al-Qaeda-linked al Nusra Brigades are fighting alongside populists in Syria. Former AQI fighters took up arms alongside the Libyan youth to topple Gadhaffi. The Iranian "Green Revolution" was an intra-mural fight between two sets of cleric-led Islamists.
Forcing the events of Arab Spring into the Bush-era narrative of secular modernism vs. Islamism is a gross distortion.
Actually, that's not fair. I don't agree very much with the ideological orientation of Foreign Policy, but lumping them in with LWJ or JFQ isn't right.
The one most significant fact of the whole Afghan War is that it is an ethnic-based civil war, with the US backing the Hazaras, Tadjiks and Uzbeks, to help them subjugate the Pashtuns. The US military is fighting a racist battle AGAINST the principles in our Declaration of Independence.
But that fact has been classified a military secret. Shhhh!
Odd, then, that we're backing a government run by a Pashtun.
I assume that the Popalzai, who are strongly behind the government, are not "real Pashtuns."
I would believe an analysis of military outcomes at TomDispatch before I’d believe any of the self-delusion posted at Long War Journal, Foreign Policy or Joint Forces Quarterly.
I would them in roughly equal esteem, or lack thereof.
If you’ve fought there, or even if you just went there as a REMF, you cannot see clearly. It’s too personal.
I wonder, do you bring this same misguided idea to any other fields of government endeavor? Should we ignore Dr. Howard Dean on health care issues, because having real-world experience in the field means that it's "too personal?"
And Joe, I’ve got some bad news:
while we won the invasion of 2001-2002, we lost the occupation and imperial era of 2005-2014.
It's usually not a good idea to describe the future using the past tense. Doing so is certainly not "news."
Use any version: the 2 Administrations have cranked out at least a dozen versions between them, and we’ve failed to meet any.
Actually, the one currently being articulated by the Obama administration sounds sufficiently modest, and therefore workable: to leave Afghanistan with a government that can defend its borders, which is not an ally of al Qaeda. Being rather modest myself, I think it would probably be best to wait until we have some real-world evidence before we draw a conclusion about whether this goal has been achieved, instead of merely checking our guts and proclaiming that it can't possibly be, because that's what (some of us, rather callously) want to believe.
You should ignore "the war guys" and acquaint yourself with some more nuanced, thoughtful analysts. Fox News' military analysts are just as beholden to an eternal, unchanging narrative as...well...you.
Actually, "the people," for some incomprehensible reason, boycotted the vote on the constitution. They didn't try to turn out voters; they tried, and succeeded in accomplishing the opposite.
As we saw in Iraq, when the Sunnis boycotted the January 2005 elections, it's not good idea to carry on as if the boycotting minority doesn't exist and doesn't need to be brought into the political system.
US actions will be increasingly subject to international standards of justice and criminality.
Shooting at members of a terrorist group that has committed, and continues to commit, acts of mass murder against your citizenry is as textbook an example of Article 51 self-defense as can possibly be imagined.
By including the phrase "who knock off Seven-Eleven convenience stores" in your argument (instead of, for instance, mass murder), you confuse your point, and make it look like your statement is about seriousness, not status.
The Bush administration did not invent that designation. It was their usage of it that was notable - who they applied it to, and what they determined we were allowed to do with people who fit it. The Geneva Conventions themselves discuss the difference between legal and illegal combatants, also called "protected persons" and "non-protected persons."
Since you indicate that you are clear about who we are fighting in our war on terror, perhaps you could state who, succinctly ?
Al Qaeda and their allies. That was easy. I just don't understand why people think that playing dumb is an effective rhetorical technique. In may experience, it just makes you look dumb, or dishonest, depending on well you play.
"As an infantryman," you know that people are accidently killed in wars, and that this does not mean that those people who were accidently killed were considered the enemy. During the Normandy campaign, ten thousand French civilians were killed. Do you think the United States was deliberately waging war on the population of France? Of course you don't - you're just playing dumb.
Please clarify whether you believe, as our Government believes, that unidentified people who exhibit a “signature” pattern of associating with suspected terrorists thereby become legitimate targets. Like every nation that has ever fought a war, we are targeting people whose names we do not know, based on their actions working on behalf of enemy forces.
Oh, and we're operating under the rule of law right now. Merely referencing very smart-sounding phrases like "rule of law" and "war crimes" without providing any reasoning of evidence isn't an argument; it's just using a fifty-cent word to try to dress up a weak position, like so much red-white-and-blue crepe paper hung in a shabby American Legion hall.
© 2024 All Rights Reserved
Many of those targeted have not been Al-Qaeda.
Drones are, of course, being used for close air support and tactical bombing in the Afghanistan War. It really doesn't make sense to talk about those strikes alongside the targeted strikes against al Qaeda, instead of talking about them as part of the Afghan War.
I was talking about the program targeting al Qaeda, which doesn't really have anything in common with the air support provided in Afghanistan, except for the equipment used.
The joint report by the Stanford International Human Rights Clinic and the New York University Global Justice Clinic
Those are always my go-to sources when I need an analysis of a military or security issue, such as whether the drone strikes against al Qaeda has eroded its capacity to engage in acts of mass-casualty terrorism against Americans.
Taking public opinion polls doesn't actually tell me anything about whether the tiny al Qaeda death cult has been made less effective as a force.
Comparing al Qaeda to Hamas or Hezbollah is deeply misguided, and not only in a moral sense.
Hezbollah is a mass political party, commanding the loyalty of millions. So is Hamas. They have a message and a program that is broadly appealing to their own people, and have achieved political legitimacy through their success in electoral politics and their ability to deliver meaningful, effective governance.
Al Qaeda probably had 1/1000th the numbers of either of those organizations at its peak. It is a small death cult, despised and hunted by the populaces of its "own" people, whom it frequently kills in acts of mass terror. It has achieved no political success anywhere, and has never delivered anything to its followers but death and destruction.
Drone operations require a fair amount of intelligence and infrastructure support from local governments and populations. This support will evaporate with increased anti-American sentiment.
So why hasn't it?
I keep seeing people threaten all sorts of terrible outcomes to the United States from the act of shooting at al Qaeda. Where are they?
In the meantime, I don't have to wait for the evidence on the other side of the ledger; I need only remember the messages found in the bin Laden compound, in which he bemoans the erosion of al Qaeda's capacity to wage its jihad because of the ongoing attrition of its leadership.
Mr. Klare writes about "If Obama says no," and "If giving the go-ahead by President Obama," but the finding that the pipeline needs is made by the Secretary of State, who must find that the program is in the national interest before allowing a cross-border pipeline.
The appointment of John Kerry, who was called "the best environmentalist in the Senate" by Al Gore and who played a prominent role in the 1992 Rio Conference, to be the next Secretary of State is a good sign.
Since the visit seems to have been a flop, I'll need a little more explanation about the 'impressive' part.
Oh, I'll reply to your comments, sure.
It's this invocation of me for no apparent reason that's a bit...strange.
Thanks, you two!
Isn't it unusual in Muslim countries for the religious right - when it exists as a distinct political force - to be aligned with the business class?
Have you ever noticed that I've never written a comment about you?
I loom way too large in your consciousness, JT.
When you have nightmares about me, what does my facial hair look like?
That's a policy argument; I was responding to Professor Cole's legal argument.
The AUMF is not a declaration of war
Under American law (the War Powers Act) passed by Congress, and according to every President who has ever acted under one, and according to the U.S. Supreme Court, and under international law, an AUMF is a declaration of war.
It's true that passing an AUMF instead of an old-fashioned war declaration is intended to allow members of Congress to avoid political responsibility, but that really has nothing to do with the constitutional or legal question. An AUMF creates exactly the same legal state of war as a war declaration.
As for the rest of your comment, none of it really has anything to do with the question at hand. You just sort of went into a stream of consciousness anti-counter-terrorism riff.
I also notice the weasel-wording: enemies that the CIA can call “supporters of al-Qaeda”
Note that he won't come out and say that these people are actually al Qaeda and actually generate a threat to the United States, because he doesn't want to acknowledge that al Qaeda amounts to a legitimate threat. And yet, he doesn't want to commit to the opposite position, either.
This whole argument is based upon asserting that there is a threat produced that it is in America's interest to avoid, and yet Realist doesn't want to acknowledge that threat, while still using it to threaten.
Ultimately, RBTL, that's a political decision.
We can talk about what the metrics should be, but it's not like counting beans.
Obama should end it all before going out of office.
Indeed.
But let's note that this is not merely an administrative step; it involves actually finishing the job.
I sincerely hope that Obama ends this war, in the manner described in the post below (decimating core al Qaeda), and then closes the door on this chapter of history.
But I argue that the AUMF is itself unconstitutional, since it went beyond calling for hunting down and punishing the plotters of 9/11 to creating a class of persons (“al-Qaeda members”) who are objects of a Bill of Attainder.
Every war declaration does this. When we declared war on Japan, it wasn't just the forces who took part in the Pearl Harbor attack who were covered, but any member of their armed forces, including people who didn't join until 1945.
The difficulties in identifying in practice who belongs in the category are an important policy point, but they don't really raise any constitutional issue. In every war, there have been people who were not unformed front-line troops, people who acted in a covert manner, who posed identification issues, but who were nonetheless legitimately covered by the declaration of war (or force authorization). It is novel that this war consists almost entirely of that sort of enemy, but that category of person, and the practical difficulties they raise, are nothing new.
Regarding #s 4 and 6:
Is it that he was in the Directorate of Intelligence and it was the Directorate of Operations guys who were waterboarding? Isn’t he implying that there are black ops being run by rogue parts of the agency that aren’t open to influence from even deputy executive directors?
Likewise, LAT notes that “Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said the interrogation program was ‘corrupted by personnel with pecuniary conflicts of interest.’” Hunh? Somebody was making money off the torture?
We've known since the OLC memos, if not before, that the waterboarding was conducted by private contractors, not CIA employees. The picture that seems to be emerging is that it was, in fact, a rogue operation run out of the DCI's office that bypassed the Directorates, and was answerable only to the Director and the White House.
I think there is a better than 50/50 change he will. I also think there will be a big political fight with Congress if he does. What happens when the President says we've won the war, and Congress wants to keep fighting?
The actions in Mali aren't being carried out under the AUMF, but at the invitation of the Malian government.
If any counter-terror military actions (as opposed to law enforcement actions) take place in Yemen, Pakistan, or Somalia after the war is ended, they would have to be done at the behest of the local governments, too.
Most of the drone strikes have been carried out as close air support or tactical bombing in support of the conventional ground war in Afghanistan. Those strikes aren't intended to go after senior al Qaeda leaders, but like any other air support in a war, to strike the enemy fighting the war. Those are the vasty majority of the "signature strikes" that have been conducted, and they don't really have anything to do with the "disposition matrix" or the doctrine put forward in the recently-leaded white paper.
It's a mistake to conflate air strikes in the Af-Pak War with those in the war against al Qaeda, merely because the same equipment is used. We can, indeed, talk about targeting senior al Qaeda commanders, because there actually is a program to target them being conducted - in addition to the strikes, whether from drones, piloted jets, or helicopters, that target ground forces in (or entering) Afghanistan.
That said, the unique challenges in identifying the enemy in this war are a real concern. The answer is for Congress to apply vigorous oversight, using both its power of the purse and its war-declaring authority to demand cooperation from the executive.
This isn't to say that the legislature should take on the role of reviewing individual targets, but they should be reviewing how the executive is going about its business.
There have been a couple orders of magnitude fewer civilians killed in the war against al Qaeda (the "drone program") than in the iraq War, the Afghan War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or the first Gulf War.
To single out civilian casualties as something that makes "the drone war" uniquely bad or legally shaky is strange.
Al Qaeda has clearly been degraded significantly. It is a shell of what it was on 9/11.
I think we're going to see Obama wrap this up in his second term, perhaps coterminous with the Afghan War.
Shamsi argues that the Obama administration is already relying on an overbroad interpretation of the AUMF to justify strikes against alleged militants in Yemen or Somalia without demonstrating precisely how they are associated with al-Qaida or engaged in anti-U.S. hostilities.
That's a rather implausible argument. The conspiracy to bomb a jetliner over Detroit (the Underwear Bomber plot) originated in Yemen and was conducted al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula. The bomber testified that Anwar al-Awlaki was an operational commander of the group, and helped to organize the attack. Later, Awlaki was killed when a drone strike blew up the car he war riding in. Also riding in the car was Samir Khan, who was part of the core al Qaeda organization in Pakistan. Given that set of facts, it's pretty implausible to claim that AQAP does not represent a threat to the United States, or that it is not associated with the bin Laden/Zawahiri "core al Qaeda" group.
The speech by Jeh Johnson is really excellent.
I do believe that on the present course, there will come a tipping point – a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that al Qaeda as we know it, the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed.
This is very similar to something Leon Panetta said when he became Secretary of Defense, which was echoed by David Patraeus:
The United States is “within reach” of defeating al-Qaeda and is targeting 10 to 20 leaders who are key to the terrorist network’s survival, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday during his first trip to Afghanistan since taking charge at the Pentagon....“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them, because I do believe that if we continue this effort that we can really cripple al-Qaeda as a threat to this country,” he told reporters on his plane en route to Afghanistan. “I’m convinced,” he added, “that we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.”
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-07-09/world/35266826_1_qaeda-strategic-defeat-remote-tribal-areas
Johnson and Panetta are laying down the same marker: the war against al Qaeda will end, our efforts transition from armed conflict to law enforcement, when al Qaeda is defeated to the point where they cease to be capable of being a strategic threat to this country, and revert to be an ordinary terrorist organization. This fits in with the observation about the end of "core al Qaeda," in that it is the global scale of the organization that elevates its capabilities and reach beyond the level of run-of-the-mill terror groups like the Red Brigades or the PFLP.
"Corporate Profits"
Ah, yes, drone strikes in the rich territories of rural Yemen, Somalia, and the rural areas of Pakistan are about "corporate profits."
Obviously, a desire to prevent al Qaeda from launching terrorist attacks against us is so utterly implausible as a reason for the strikes that there must be some economic motive.
I know: we're launching drone strikes into Yemen as the first part of a long-term plan to steal their nothing. Added to the nothing that is so prevalent in Somalia, it adds up to a rich prize indeed.
END THE DRONE STRIKES! NO WAR FOR NO OIL!
Under this document would it be lawful for a foreigner to conduct a lethal operation against senior operational leaders of the United States or “associated forces” on the grounds that such leaders operate beyond the reach of international law?
Is that "foreigner" a sovereign government that has declared war on the United States?
Because, if so, then yes, it would be lawful to conduct a lethal operation against senior operational commanders of the United States' fighting forces. Of course it would.
Why would you think I was an operational commander of al Qaeda?
Do you have even the slightest intelligence to back that up?
Do you think that 100 people in the executive branch, reviewing intelligence, are going to come to the conclusion that I am an operational commander of al Qaeda?
Your assertion that there is "NO REVIEW" is utterly belied by the widely-reported facts of how these reviews are carried out. Did you never see the widely-discussed New York Times article discussing this?
You expend a great deal of emotion, but you consistently garble the facts.
I suppose, Brian, that a Black Hawk Down operation is always technically an option, no matter how long the odds, or how bloody it could turn out to be.
You ask about cost-benefit analysis. It's estimated that over 1000 Somalis were killed in Mogadishu that day. Shouldn't that enter into your cost-benefit analysis?
But what does any of this have to do with the rule of law? The rule of law doesn't require that we capture people we are at war against.
Yes, Brian, I am offended when people engage in bullshit when discussing matters of import.
I cling to an apparently old-fashioned idea that people should be truthful.
I guess you don't. You consider it "rich" to hold to such a standard.
Your comment tell us a great deal, but only about yourself, and how seriously to take whatever you write in the future.
In fact, Nathaniel, I did read the white paper. Every single instance in which it identifies who may be targeted uses the phrase "operational commander of al Qaida and associated groups."
Every.
Single.
One.
The white paper does not assert, ever, anywhere, the right of "someone in the White House" to order someone who is not "an operational commander of al Qaida or an associated organization" to be killed.
Go ahead, champ, quote me some language from the white paper that demonstrates I am misstating what appears in it.
...says the guy who thinks that operational commanders of a fighting force are noncombatants.
Ah, so the arguments about juries, indictments, crimes, statutes, bills of attainder, judicial review, and outlaws are all about war powers, and not criminal law?
You sure about that, Nathaniel?
You're clearly very emotional right now. Maybe once you cool off a bit, you can another run at that question.
So…the POTUS can kill anyone he deems fit
Not under any doctrine described in this white paper.
Did you read it?
Awlaki was beyond the reach of the law, in a remote part of Yemen controlled by hostile militias.
Drone strikes are not used to replace captures and arrests; they are used when capture and arrest are not available. That's why they are happening in remote areas of Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
What ever widening war in geography? One of the very first actions the Bush administration took after the September 20 AUMF was to send Special Forces to the Philippines. Special Forces have been operative in North Africa since 2002. Bush launched a drone strike in Yemen in 2002.
Where is this war being fought in 2013 that is was not being fought in 2002?
Do you really think the drone program costs half a trillion bucks a year?
I've adopted a now process for dealing with your commentary: I read until I find the first grossly untrue assertion of fact, and then stop reading.
As usual, it is in the very first sentence.
Now, a U.S. Citizen can just disagree with U.S. policy, associate (used to be a freedom) with people someone (we don’t know who) has deemed to be undesirable, and now that person can be legally killed on the order of someone in the White House.
This is not even remotely accurate, and has nothing to do with the doctrine put forward in the white paper.
Did you read it?
Since when are operation commanders of a fighting force considers non-combatants?
Do you think that shooting at generals instead of privates is unlawful, because generals don't pull triggers themselves?
This one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists
A con law analysis that does not recognize that the police power and the war-making power are two different things is not, in any sense, "excellent."
1. The drone strikes are not criminal sanctions. They are not exercises in the police power, but the war power. There has never been a requirement for judicial authorization to shoot at the enemy during a war. Just because air strikes have become a great deal more accurate does not turn them into criminal penalties.
2. Same as #1. Authorizing force against member of al Qaeda is no more a "bill of attainder" than authorizing force against the Kaiser's army. Again, just because air strikes have become a great deal more accurate does not turn them into criminal sanctions.
3. In the prosecution of a war, and the selection of targets, the executive has always had the war-making power. "Judge, jury, and executioner" are terms used to describe criminal proceedings deriving from the police power.
4. Same at 1, 2, and 3. Enemies can be shot at in war not because they are outlaws, but because they are the enemy. When a tank crew shoots at another tank, are they declaring them to be outlaws? Of course not. Their actions has nothing to do with legal status at all. Again, just because air strikes in a war have become more accurate does not transform them into criminal sanctions.
5. Thank you for your opinion that using military force against al Qaeda is "insane on the face of it." This is a policy dispute to be settled through our democratic system. Good luck!
Either it applies or it doesn’t.
This is false. One can be both a legitimate military target and a criminal subject to arrest and criminal charges. Think about all of the uniformed German officers tried at Nuremberg. Prior to capture, any of them could have been shot at, just like every other soldier in the army.
To claim that one cannot be both a soldier and a criminal is to argue that nothing done in the prosecution of a war can be illegal.
I don't think we even need to invoke the novel nature of this war to do away with the "far from any battlefield" objection.
Think about the bombing of enemy air fields, which are commonly located hundreds of miles behind enemy lines.
In a secret Justice Department memo, the administration claims it has legal authority to assassinate U.S. citizens overseas even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the United States.
No, but it does require that there is intelligence indicating that they belong to an organization against which Congress has declared war (the always-inconvenient September 20, 2001 AUMF).
Anyone belonging to the military of a power against whom Congress has declared was has always been considered a legitimate target, even if that individual is not, at the moment of attack, engaged in hostilities, or poses an imminent threat. How many airplane mechanics and mail clerks do you think have been killed by air strikes?
"AUMF references persons involved in planning and carrying out 9/11."
The actual text of the AUMF: Section 2 - Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
All member of that al Qaeda organization are covered by the authorization, regardless of when they joined, just as any member of the Japanese armed forces would be covered by the December 1941 war declaration, even if they joined in 1945.
We are at war with al Qaeda, the organization.
Another possible explanation for the Pakistani government's relative quiet about those: this series of strikes may have been targeting al Qaeda figures, as opposed to cross-border fighters (or their commanders), who tend to have friends in the ISI.
As the drawdown in Afghanistan continues, the ratio of counter-terror strikes to air support for the Af-Pak War is going to rise.
What a stupid argument. A declaration of war loses the force of law after a given amount of time? Even if hostilities are ongoing on both sides throughout the time period? I defy you to cite a single law or treaty that expresses that doctrine.
Or you could do what you usually do: throw around some insults and hope nobody notices the difference.
Awwwwww. That's so sad.
A petrochemical company with ties to the most politicized branch of the Iranian government's armed forces just lost a boat-load of money.
Sniff. Sniff. I need a hug.
The coal-vs.-gas figures, showing that natural gas produces half as much CO2 as coal, are per unit of energy produced, not unit of potential energy, so the incomplete burning of coal wouldn't come into it.
As others have said, it's not employment that makes the coal industry powerful. It's wealth.
And Lisa Jackson's tenure at the EPA should demonstrate that King Coal has been knocked off its throne.
Once again - and see if you can follow this time - The recently-announced investigation into the legality of drone strikes by the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, for instance, isn’t even including that question in his report.
Answering a question put to him a media appearance is not the same thing as including that subject in his report.
Kindly make an effort to read, and understand what you just read, before you start throwing around accusations and doing your always-inappropriate touchdown dance.
Like the killing of 16 year old American Abdulrahman al-Awlaki?
No, because he was not targeted. He was killed accidently when he happened to go to meet with his father's al Qaeda buddies when they were being targeted.
To write a story about that strike and not mention that the target was Ibrahim al-Banna is, perhaps, the most dishonest piece of propaganda I have ever witnessed.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011101564019722483.html
I hate the rank dishonest of these critiques.
Anything the administration does in support of indigenous democracy is weak and late and empty, except when it rises to a certain level like in Libya and Syria, at which point the strength of American support is just proof that the movement isn't really about indigenous democracy at all. And also, hey, look over there. The U.S. didn't really make an unprecedented break with a core regional military ally in Egypt because Syria. No, wait, that's out of date now, so Bahrain.
There is not set of facts that will get you to stray from your narrative. This isn't an honest effort to understand and describe what is happening; it's an effort to spin it.
The original White House response to the Cairo protests was to stand by Mubarak.
The original White House response was to put pressure on Mubarak to give in to the protesters' demands and negotiate a nonviolent solution.
But so what? We're now talking about whether the White House's support for the mass movement that toppled a close security ally was fast enough and strong enough. Does that sound like the Cold War to you? Does that sound like the Bush White House's response to the lawyers' protest against Musharrif? Can you name one single case during the Cold War in which the U.S. government worked to encourage the military of an allied country to refuse orders to crush an uprising? Even one? Repeatedly moving the goal posts so you can keep saying "not good enough" isn't the point. The question is about similarity to Cold War policies, and there is none.
The White House is still standing behind Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Yes, the White House has not completely abandoned the concept of national interest, just moved away from it. Again, this is moving the goal posts.
The first White House statement on the Honduran coup was weak and non-committal.
Oh noes, it took three whole days before they denounced the illegal coup! You know, just like the 1956 Guatemalan coup...except, you know, exactly the opposite.
So, yes, the White House sometimes supports democracy when it feels it must.
The United States was one of the first nations in the world to recognize the revolutionary government in Tunisia that overthrew our former ally. I wonder, do you they felt that they "must" because of Tunisia's awesome military might, or because of the weight it throws around in international trade?
On the question of proportionality, which is the essence of her argument:
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's numbers, there have been fewer people killed in a decade of drone strikes against al Qaeda* than were killed by al Qaeda on the morning of September 11.
It's tough to argue that that represents a disproportionate response.
*The total number of deaths from drone strikes is higher, but many of those were killed in close-air-support and tactical strikes as part of the conventional war in Afghanistan.
With all due respect to the "Research Professor International Dispute Resolution," not even the UN claims that the attacks by al Qaeda do not provide legitimate cause for self-defense under the UN Charter.
The recently-announced investigation into the legality of drone strikes by the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, for instance, isn't even including that question in his report.
The Iraq War is much better-understood as being about bases than oil, fine. We wanted "an ally in the war on terror" from which we could "project power throughout the region," and we needed to relocate the troops from those Saudi bases.
This does not change the fact that it was carried out for imperial, geo-political purposes.
The most scary aspect of this is how far will extrajudicial assassination go?
If it goes beyond targeting enemy commanders in a declared war, it will be a problem.
When is it that the central legal and moral principle never finds its way into the discussion of these strikes? Yes, Mark, in a war, you are allowed to shoot the enemy. No, this does not violated the Constitution or international law.
This would have been an excellent piece if it was written a decade ago. I suppose it is one of the inevitablities of age that one is slower to recognize changes when they happen at 90 than if they had happened at 40.
In what universe is it forbidden to say that the Iraq War wasn't about spreading democracy?
In what universe is the phrase "losing China" never challenged?
Where is the freak-out about "losing Latin America?" That region has made the greatest movement away from the American sphere of influence of any in the world since the end of the Cold War, and the reaction of the political class has been close to imperceptible. There is a small, determined cadre of neoconservatives, such as some of the National Review writers, who are running around with their hair on fire, trying to get us to care about the leftist governments in South America, and their efforts have been a complete failure. If Chomsky's theory that it is 1949 forever were true, shouldn't we be seeing something similar to the "Who lost China?" hearings about Brazil and Bolivia? Is it even remotely possible that any Cold War administration would have denounced the coup in Honduras and slapped sanctions on them until they replaced the coup regime with a democratically-elected president?
How can one explain the claim that "every administration...support(s) democracy only if it conforms to certain strategic and economic interests," given this administration's response to the Egyptian Arab Spring? I wonder, what exactly were our strategic and economic interests in seeing a democratic overthrow of our core regional military ally?
In the 1980s, Noam Chomsky was one of the most insightful critics of Cold War-era foreign policy. In the second decade of the 21st century, he remains so.
This is mostly right. That Congress expressly invoked its war powers should make that clear enough.
I have to question the claim that al Qaeda targets are being selected for their political leadership instead of their operational leadership. Awlaki was making his little YouTube videos in Yemen for years, but it was only when he went over to the operational side that we began shooting at him.
And also the claim that terrorism is the tool of "the world's poor." Bin Laden was fabulously rich, so much so that he got his start providing funds, from himself and his rich Saudi friends, for the Afghan insurgency. None of al Qaeda's leadership, and none of the suicide pilots of of 9/11, were po 'boys.
Are not the contradictions in US foreign policy creating a dilemma for it?
It's not our foreign policy that creates this dilemma. There would be a popular uprising including mainly liberal and nationalist elements, which includes anti-American international jihadis, regardless of what the U.S. does.
Obama's foreign policy, which seems to consist mainly of trying to steer weaponry away from the jihadis and towards the more democratic and pro-western elements, is an effort to deal with this dilemma.
The Arab Spring uprisings have consistently generated this dilemma for the United States, and American foreign policy in this area seems to consist mainly of reacting to events beyond our control.
Regarding the video:
Henry Kissinger is meeting with Ahmedinejad?!?
Way to bury the lede, Perfesser!
Obama’s main form of foreign policy interventionism is a) sanctions (e.g. Iran) and b) drones, as in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
I question whether the war against al Qaeda - the context in which the drone strikes are taking place - is properly considered "foreign policy."
When the U.S. or one of its allies arrests an al Qaeda operative overseas, is that "foreign policy?" What about an attempted arrest raid that turns into a firefight? What about the raid on the Abbottobad compound?
The term "foreign policy" generally refers to geo-politics, and the use of force against al Qaeda - ranging all the way from quiet arrests to drone strikes - doesn't seem to be carried out in the pursuit of geo-political objectives. The strikes in Pakistan, and the hostility they produce from the Pakistani government, actually seem to run counter to American geopolitical objectives - which should make the point that they are being driven by other considerations.
At the same time, you don't see the types of targeted drone strikes* that are being carried out against the al Qaeda leadership being used in the pursuit of any other foreign policy objectives the administration is working on.
*A "drone" is just a piece of equipment, and are used in many different ways. We wouldn't conflate sending someone to shoot a foreign head of state with an infantryman laying down suppressive fire with a machine gun in a war zone just because they both use bullets, and we shouldn't let the equipment define the meaning of the mission in the case of unmanned aerial vehicles, either. There were drones hitting artillery batteries during the active fighting in Misrata, but that's quite a bit different from blowing up a car full of terrorists driving to a secret meeting in Yemen.
An outright ban on spending money to do X is, de facto, an outright ban on doing X.
Have you ever had any involvement in the management of federal grants? If you aren't allowed to use federal funds to do X, you are not even allowed to do X in a building whose utility bills are partially paid with federal funds.
Obama lost this fight. Guantanamo is going stay open for as long as the war goes on. Closing this office is the acknowledgment of a political reality that happened years ago.
This moves the fight to ending the war. We need an exit strategy not just from Afghanistan, but from the war against al Qaeda, for Gitmo to close.
Shorter Amspirnational: I have more important things to worry about than the rule of law!
Do you ever write comments about subjects other than how I've wronged you anymore?
The solution you're talking about is one that hits HSBC on the corporate level, not the level of individual managers or directors.
My comment was about the idea of responding with individual criminal sanctions.
It’s clear that Joe from Lowell is here to defend the broad
ruling class...
Or I'm making a point about the law, and your obsession with sophomoric Marxism caused it to zoom over your head.
One or the other.
When we're talking about the really important bad actors in the mortgage meltdown, we're talking about huge banks whose "investors" are the retirement portfolios of hundreds of millions of ordinary individuals, pension accounts, and municipalities, who have zero operative control over those banks. I don't see how punishing them, people and institutions who are also the ones who suffered the most from this disaster, is going to solve the problem.
Talking in terms of regulatory frameworks and enforcement, as you do here, seems to be a more productive path than trying to bootstrap unprovable individual prosecutions out of these cases against the banks.
Most of what was done to cause the mortgage meltdown did not involve individuals violating criminal statutes.
The problem is, being able to prove that HSBC violated the law is not the same thing as being able to prove that an individual corporate director or manager at HSBC committed an act that violated the law.
Criminal prosecutions of individuals require the government to prove that the defendant committed a specific overt act, and that that act violated a specific statute.
It would be a violation of the rule of law, not an upholding of it, to convict a person without being able to meet that standard.
Often, the level of silliness in these hearings in inversely related to their importance.
That the Republicans are indulging themselves so dramatically suggests to me that Hagel's confirmation has all the votes it needs and then some.
Thanks, Bill, but it's hardly my observation. Hans Morganthau was trying to get the communism-obsessed Cold War U.S. political class to understand this back in the late 40s. It's too bad it didn't work.
"We're going to support the international socialist revolution, comrades...starting in those countries that just happen to lie between Germany and Russia. Workers of the world unite!"
I imagine you have just as much evidence for your claim "people actually think the likes of the Jabhat al-Nusra are the good guys" than you do for the claim that those are Turkish tanks.
Here's a story about the U.S. State Department putting the Front on the list of international terrorist organizations.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/11/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html
Who are these "people" who consider them the good guys? Do they drive Soviet-built tanks for the Turkish army?
And now, with working link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_naval_facility_in_Tartus
Russia’s reaction to NATO intervention in Syria
Huh? Russia is "reacting" to NATO intervention in Syria. Syria has been a Soviet/Russian client state for generations, and their intervention in the Syrian Civil War predates that of any NATO power.
While we're talking about Russia and geopolitical history, how about we acknowledge the long standing Russian interest in having naval access to the Mediterranean?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_naval_facility_in_Tartus&sa=U&ei=-_oKUfL_NIix0QH_64G4BA&ved=0CBgQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNF-XUXTgeJnm2rKfLDEG0odhbJPrQ
Here is footage of "FSA Thugs attack Kurds with Tank." See how the barrel of the main gun has a thicker "sleeve" at the end? And see the dish-looking thing just behind and above the main gun, with the rounded back?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUMX93AVbjk
That is a Soviet-built tank, probably a T-55:
http://imageocd.com/automobiles/t-55-tank-unknown-pictures-and-wallpapers-3
The American-built tanks the Turkish army uses, like M-60 and the Abrams, do not have that "sleeve" located at the end of the gun, but in the middle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60_Patton#M60A3_Patton
That is a Soviet-built tank shelling those Kurds, which means it came from the Syrian government, not the Turks.
what’s left of Russian territory.
So the Stans, the Baltic Republics, and the other former Soviet Republicans were "Russian territory?"
Oh, boo hoo, Russia doesn't dominate its "near abroad" anymore. Truly, one of the great tragedies of history.
American bases in central Asia! Never in the bad old Communist days would the Soviets tolerated this level of threat. Yes, the Soviets never would have allowed central Asian governments to decide for themselves whether or not to host American bases. It's rather indecent of you to consider the growing independents of Russia's former colonial subjects to be a cause for mourning.
Actually Russia is surrounded by NATO, you’re being a bit glib.
With the exception of its north, east, and south, Russia is completely surrounded by NATO.
I hope that's not too glib.
It may have started out as an indigenous revolution, by now it has turned into a civil war with one of the sides heavily armed and funded by foreign states and non-state jihadist groups.
You are referring, of course, to the Russian armaments being sent to the fascist government, and their support by Hezbollah, right?
There are reports that those tanks were not even tanks captured from the regime, but Turkish tanks.
Oh, "there are reports," are there?
The Kremlin can keep changing the flag every few decades, but Russian foreign policy will always be Russian foreign policy.
In the absence of Morsi's power grab, the response of a few thugs to the sentences would not have blown up into a national crisis.
American Embassy reports from Tegucigalpa differed from what the Obama administration was teling us about the coup.
And the cables from Benghazi show something different than what Susan Rice was telling us about the attack, in the first few days.
Putting together exactly what was happening thousands of miles away is not an easy task.
It is the stuff of conspiracy theorists to blow up the mere existence of inconsistencies into a Grand Narrative.
The names Zelaya named, such as Otto Reich, are people who are no longer at the State Department, and whose ideas are on the outs with the current administration. There certainly was an American connection, but by free-lancers - by the Obama administration's opponents. Certainly, Republicans in Congress would have supported the coup. They never would have cut off foreign aid to that country until a legitimate election was held, and they never would have denounced it as an illegal coup. Fortunately, our foreign policy isn't being run by those people anymore.
The claims about the Wikileaks cables never panned out. There was certainly a full-court press put on to try to smear this Clinton State Department by people married to their favorite, unchanging narrative, but behind all of the spin, there was no "there" there.
Turkey, Israel and the United States are openly backing the Free Syrian Army for their own selfish motives – not for love of spreading democracy – but for advancement of their respective national security interests.
If you find yourself merging Turkey, Israel, and the United States into one undifferentiated blob, you've probably taken a wrong turn somewhere.
The pathology of viewing everything that happens in the MENA region as the result of the CIA is well on display in that panel discussion. Good for you for pushing back, Professor.
Especially remarkable was the claim that by not intervening, the West is transforming Syria into "another proxy killing field."
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Non-intervention is now an imperialist plot, too?
The panelist who talks about the United States' record "over several decades" is absurdly anachronistic. Helping the fall of Mubarak isn't consistent with American Cold War record. Our policies towards Tunisia and Libya aren't consistent with this "anti-democratic empire" theory. The Obama administration's opposition to the coup in Honduras is the polar opposite of our policies in the "good old days."
Things change. Allen Dulles is mouldering in his grave. People married to beloved old narratives need to catch up with new facts. If your thinking about American policy towards the Middle East assumes that American policy in 2013 is the same as in 1949, you're just telling yourself what you want to hear.
What was Obamas reaction to the occupy protesters again?
He coopted their message and made it the central theme of his reelection campaign. I'm not sure where you're going with this.
"In the last parliamentary election..." you mean the ones that large blocs of voters boycotted?
If all of the Democrats in American boycotted the next election, the Republicans would win a massive majority of votes. If you think the election results would show a fair representation of public opinion, you're missing something.
We have Iraq 2005 as a model of what happens when the "winners" ignore the reality that a large segment of the electorate boycotted the election, and conclude that they don't need to take the existence of that opposition into account.
If the events of Arab Spring are "a region-wide civil war between an Islamist and a secular worldview," then why is it that the Islamists and secular liberals keep fighting on the same side? The Muslim Brootherhood marched alongside trade unions and cosmopolitan youth in Egypt. The al-Qaeda-linked al Nusra Brigades are fighting alongside populists in Syria. Former AQI fighters took up arms alongside the Libyan youth to topple Gadhaffi. The Iranian "Green Revolution" was an intra-mural fight between two sets of cleric-led Islamists.
Forcing the events of Arab Spring into the Bush-era narrative of secular modernism vs. Islamism is a gross distortion.
Actually, that's not fair. I don't agree very much with the ideological orientation of Foreign Policy, but lumping them in with LWJ or JFQ isn't right.
The one most significant fact of the whole Afghan War is that it is an ethnic-based civil war, with the US backing the Hazaras, Tadjiks and Uzbeks, to help them subjugate the Pashtuns. The US military is fighting a racist battle AGAINST the principles in our Declaration of Independence.
But that fact has been classified a military secret. Shhhh!
Odd, then, that we're backing a government run by a Pashtun.
I assume that the Popalzai, who are strongly behind the government, are not "real Pashtuns."
Brian,
I would believe an analysis of military outcomes at TomDispatch before I’d believe any of the self-delusion posted at Long War Journal, Foreign Policy or Joint Forces Quarterly.
I would them in roughly equal esteem, or lack thereof.
If you’ve fought there, or even if you just went there as a REMF, you cannot see clearly. It’s too personal.
I wonder, do you bring this same misguided idea to any other fields of government endeavor? Should we ignore Dr. Howard Dean on health care issues, because having real-world experience in the field means that it's "too personal?"
And Joe, I’ve got some bad news:
while we won the invasion of 2001-2002, we lost the occupation and imperial era of 2005-2014.
It's usually not a good idea to describe the future using the past tense. Doing so is certainly not "news."
Use any version: the 2 Administrations have cranked out at least a dozen versions between them, and we’ve failed to meet any.
Actually, the one currently being articulated by the Obama administration sounds sufficiently modest, and therefore workable: to leave Afghanistan with a government that can defend its borders, which is not an ally of al Qaeda. Being rather modest myself, I think it would probably be best to wait until we have some real-world evidence before we draw a conclusion about whether this goal has been achieved, instead of merely checking our guts and proclaiming that it can't possibly be, because that's what (some of us, rather callously) want to believe.
JT,
Like some of your retired generals and war wimps who Speak The Lingo?
Among your numerous shortcomings is your habit of dividing the world into "people who think exactly like me" and "everyone else."
If you imagine there is even the slightest similarity between what I think, and what appears on Fox News, you need to leave your bubble more.
You should ignore "the war guys" and acquaint yourself with some more nuanced, thoughtful analysts. Fox News' military analysts are just as beholden to an eternal, unchanging narrative as...well...you.
They won’t leave this time. It will go on and on forever.
Didn't you tell us the same thing about Iraq?
Ann's description of the internal political and social situation in the country is as strong as her analysis of the military question is weak.
Discussing the outcome of a war like the one currently going on in Afghanistan in terms of "victory" or "losing" is profoundly misguided.
TomDispatch has its virtues, but their commentary on military affairs is second to several.
Actually, "the people," for some incomprehensible reason, boycotted the vote on the constitution. They didn't try to turn out voters; they tried, and succeeded in accomplishing the opposite.
As we saw in Iraq, when the Sunnis boycotted the January 2005 elections, it's not good idea to carry on as if the boycotting minority doesn't exist and doesn't need to be brought into the political system.
US actions will be increasingly subject to international standards of justice and criminality.
Shooting at members of a terrorist group that has committed, and continues to commit, acts of mass murder against your citizenry is as textbook an example of Article 51 self-defense as can possibly be imagined.
Bill,
By including the phrase "who knock off Seven-Eleven convenience stores" in your argument (instead of, for instance, mass murder), you confuse your point, and make it look like your statement is about seriousness, not status.
Brian,
The Bush administration did not invent that designation. It was their usage of it that was notable - who they applied it to, and what they determined we were allowed to do with people who fit it. The Geneva Conventions themselves discuss the difference between legal and illegal combatants, also called "protected persons" and "non-protected persons."
Since you indicate that you are clear about who we are fighting in our war on terror, perhaps you could state who, succinctly ?
Al Qaeda and their allies. That was easy. I just don't understand why people think that playing dumb is an effective rhetorical technique. In may experience, it just makes you look dumb, or dishonest, depending on well you play.
"As an infantryman," you know that people are accidently killed in wars, and that this does not mean that those people who were accidently killed were considered the enemy. During the Normandy campaign, ten thousand French civilians were killed. Do you think the United States was deliberately waging war on the population of France? Of course you don't - you're just playing dumb.
Please clarify whether you believe, as our Government believes, that unidentified people who exhibit a “signature” pattern of associating with suspected terrorists thereby become legitimate targets. Like every nation that has ever fought a war, we are targeting people whose names we do not know, based on their actions working on behalf of enemy forces.
Oh, and we're operating under the rule of law right now. Merely referencing very smart-sounding phrases like "rule of law" and "war crimes" without providing any reasoning of evidence isn't an argument; it's just using a fifty-cent word to try to dress up a weak position, like so much red-white-and-blue crepe paper hung in a shabby American Legion hall.