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Brennan, Drones, the Obama Administration, and the Failure of the News Media

The hammering on the Drone program is just what President Obama prayed for. The question of the legality of America killing without due process will roll and roil for quite some time as the real issue is avoided. Questions of legality will take the American public's attention away from the real issue with Drones.

We are thinking that the Obama administration doesn't care if the drone program is legal or not. All They care about is whether or not the public perceives drones as successful in fighting al-Qaeda.

Drones are good for forcing al-Qaeda to mestasticize, pop up in new places, break into smaller and smaller groups that are harder and harder to deal with. Drones are good for galvanizing opinion against the U.S. Drones are good for al-Qaeda's recruiting efforts.

Drones are not good for putting an end to al-Qaeda. If only the general public was made aware of the facts...Yo! Media! Where are you?

February 8, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Al-Qaeda’s Clever Appeal to Frustrated Non-violent Demonstrators: Will it Work?

In a 15 minute video statement the “al-Qaeda” Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) took advantage of psychological-social mechanisms to try and move a non-violent crowd of Sunni demonstrators to ‘take up arms.’

 [excerpts of the address]"Getting dignity and liberation, removing injustice, and brushing off the dust of humiliation never happened and will never happen except with the shooting of bullets and the shedding of blood. Ask history about this in all nations. This is a tax that must be paid, and the tax of submission and humiliation is many times heavier than that of dignity, and there is a great difference between the two. You have paid the first tax and are still paying it, because of your parties and groups and their reckless policies. So chose, choose, O Sunni people, either elections and their parties and the tax of humiliation, or arms and jihad and the tax of dignity. One of them must be paid." [SITE]

• It begins by framing the statement as an offer of dignity and an end to frustration. Violence is a sub-clause and therefore diminished in the frame.
• ISI then agrees with the cause: the removal of Maliki’s government of injustice. This sympathy with the root of frustration nurtures the Frustration-Aggression mechanism, magnifying its affect by public acknowledgement and unifying the group of protestors in spite of the many difference held by individuals in the group.
• The Shi’ite friends of Maliki are demonized as murderers trying to eliminate all Sunnis by “murder or displacement” helping individual demonstrators overcome their personal revulsion to murder.
• The assertion that non-violent solution has been historically shown to be useless further inflames the frustration and validates it.
• The emphasis on ‘humiliation’ plays on negativity bias by accentuating the failure of the demonstrations to effect change.
• The complex of protest issues is changed to a black/white choice: submission and humiliation or dignity through violence. The implication being that the shame of failure and the weight of frustration can be replaced with dignity.
• There is an offer to join with a larger, established group, the ISI, who stand for justice, truth, and morality. The alternative is to continue to follow the” evil path of democratic parties and policies” which brought you to this impotent state.

Will the rhetoric work? It does not stand alone. Many are trying to influence the demonstrators and some have more direct contact than videos on Islamist sites. For example, Friday’s Fallujah and Ramadi demonstrations, the largest so far, remained peaceful. At Friday’s Ad'-duhr (noon prayers) the Sunni cleric Abdul-Hameed Jadoua made an appeal for non-violence when he addressed the crowd, "I tell the young people that we do appreciate your zeal .... But you should be disciplined and adhere to the directives of the clerics and tribal leaders so that we act in a reasonable way," [Fox News]

 

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Algeria Smacks Al-Qaeda again. Are you listening, President Obama?

Back in December, 2 012, Salah Gasmi, alias Salah Abou Mohamed, went to meet some friends at a restaurant in Cheurfa, Bouira province, 100 klicks east of Algiers.  Gasmi “was responsible for the terrorist group's propaganda and the co-ordination of the various small groups…A computer and communications specialist by profession, he is the suspected mastermind of the 2007 suicide bombings in Algiers.” [Magarabia] More than 60 people died in that attack, including a bunch of students passing by in a bus.

The Algerian security forces had set a trap. Gasmi was arrested and held. A month earlier AQIM’s military commander in Algeria was arrested. Other successful raids happened in the months before that.

Just yesterday the Algerian security forces arrested another al-Qaeda cell. Seven are being held. This is the fifth cell smashed in as many months. The Algerian security people are on a roll. Evidently someone arrested in December talked enough to make this latest operation a success.

We’re pleased that it was not American forces breaking up these cells. They probably would not have succeeded beyond the first attack, since the U.S. prefers to kill with drones rather than arrest and interrogate people, and you get so little information from dead guys.

January 29, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

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Al-Qaeda Loses Again as Mali Fighting Turns a Corner

Timbuktu and Gao have fallen. Ansar Dine has abandoned Ansongo, and Mali may have reached a tipping point. The Guardian reported that a new group of fighters has formed: the Islamic Movement for Azawad (IMA). This is a great loss for al-Qaeda. It has failed, once again, in its vain attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people and bring them into its global jihad.

Composed of indigenous Mali fighters, the group has committed to talks with the government. Its two main components are former members of the Tuareg separatist MNLA and former Ansar Dine members. Ansar Dine is a Tuareg-dominated Malian Islamist group that has been allied with foreign Islamic fighters. The foreigners are mainly al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). They came to Mali claiming to help the Tuareg but quickly moved to the forefront of fighting and publicity as they pushed their own global Islamic agenda.

The IMA’s leader, Ag Intallah said, "We want to wage our war and not that of AQIM."  IMA is willing to fight against the al-Qaeda allied groups.

 Bringing the IMA to the table will once again allow the legitimate grievances of the Tuareg to be seriously considered by the Mali government. This did not happen by magic. The French assault has been extremely successful and town after town has fallen from the rebels. international negotiators have been working hard to move things toward a non-violent solution. It is possible that the frustration of these losses and the realization that violence will not win their fight has forced them to consider political solutions.

This may be the first time al-Qaeda has come to the aid of the Tuareg, but this is not the first ‘Tuareg rebellion.’ Now it’s up to President Traore and the Mali government to forge a lasting peace that recognizes the rights of a people disenfranchised, much as the Kurdish were, by arbitrary lines drawn by European occupiers. Anything less will leave a smoldering bitterness to burst out again. Their first step will have to be cutting their ties to AQIM, which has been silently tolerated for years.

January 29, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Iraq Attacks and Demonstrations Up; Maliki’s Power Down; 'Protesters' Killed

Just as the recent peaceful protests made a difference and yielded a softening of the de-Baathification programs in Iraq, agitators managed to incite government troops to fire on the demonstrators. Throwing rocks at soldiers at a checkpoint and refusing to back down, a small group drew fire. Seven were killed and over 40 wounded.

Iraq had just reached a new high. Last week saw the largest number of attacks by nonstate armed groups in the last 12 months. Recent months have seen an increase in peaceful demonstrations against the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Iraq’s own Shiite religious authority in Najaf has decided to reign in the Prime Minister’s Accountability and Justice Law (aka the de-Baathification program). Maliki has appointed a committee to investigate complaints of anti-Sunni bias voiced by the demonstrators. At the head of the committee is the Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Jisssaom al-Shahristani, a respected Iraqi-Shiite leader.

And all it takes to put the gains at risk is a handful of trouble makers. We hope the protesting Iraqis can see through this attempt to derail their legitimate struggle for Justice. We hope they will turn the agitators away and return to what was working: non-violent protests.

January 25, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

One Man’s Terrorist is Another’s Freedom Fighter

To hear the French tell it, the January 13, 2013 French attack on Ansar al-Din (probably allied with “al-Qaeda”) forces near Konna, Mali led to the deaths of over 100 Islamist fighters. 11 Malian soldiers, one French pilot, and about 10 civilians (including at least 3 children) were also killed.

Taking on the mantle of liberator and protector of the Malian people, Ansar al-Din told a markedly different tale in a statement distributed on jihadist forums on January 19, 2013. In their version they were forced to fight to protect Mali from French assaults in a colonial grab for more power and territory. "This was not an easy decision, for everyone knows the extent of the difficulty of waging this war, especially in such a time when the colonial powers are gathering their forces to invade us, and in light of the imbalance in number and equipment."

So strong were the Ansar al-Din warriors that the French forced “the African nations to throw in their soldiers so as to be human shields for them." Ansar al-Din’s retreat was self-characterized as a strategic choice not forced upon them. They declared that a message was sent to everyone that the people of northern Mali are prepared to sacrifice everything in order to live under Sharia-based governance and not return to the “age of enslavement.”

Whatever ‘truth’ you wish to embrace, one thing is clear: the recent, less than one-year-old, Tuareg/”al-Qaeda” rebellion against the Mali government is not over. It seems as if the historically nomadic Tuareg of the Sahara have been coopted by radical Islamic forces.  The nomads were seeking a land to call their own since the colonizers didn’t bother giving them one when they chopped the continent into Euro-pieces. It does sound a bit like the plight of the Kurdish people.

Who came riding to their assistance? “Al-Qaeda” groups who first pledged to help the Tuareg. Although Ansar al-Dine denies any links with al-Qaeda, it effectively functions as a local umbrella under which members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) can operate. It is true that many members are Tuareg, but the rhetoric has changed drastically, altering the frame of the struggle a fight for liberation and homeland to a desire for an extremist Islamic Sharia-land.

Woe to those who reach out to “al-Qaeda” for help. They will get more than they bargained for.

If only Mali and its allies in the struggle against Islamist extremism had carefully listened to, intelligently  thought about, and compassionately responded to the voices of the Tuareg before the nomads felt total frustration and a need for a violent solution…we would all have been on a path closer to more peaceful tomorrows.

January 24, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Camels or Drones: Learning from Somalia's al-Shebab

Al-Shebab is a deadlly bunch of kidnapping, killing terrorists.

After the Somali government collapsed in 1991. The power struggle between various sharia-focused groups yielded al-Shebab (aka Shabaab al-Mujahideen, Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (HSM)). They now control the Southern half of Somalia. Of themselves they say, with reference to 911,  they honor "the martyrs who covered battlefields with their blood in various fronts; east and west, south and north...in defense of the victories of the Mujahedeen who broke the pride of the infidel West, scattered its papers and made their senior commanders lose their minds."

This weekend al-Shebab released a video showing how it is giving camels, cattle, and sheep to poor families in Juba, at the Southern end of Somalia. When asked about al-Shebab a man said, "I ask the mujahideen to strive a lot and especially in such projects. I ask the Muslim public to stand with their mujahideen brothers, and I remind them of the state that they were in before they came, of the violation of honors and the highway robberies. Today we are safe."

In the war to win the minds of the people our drones do little to help us. It might be more effective to stop spending the billions wasted violence and use millions to actually help people in practical ways.

We could learn from al-Shebab.

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Mali: Is it a war of the U.S. against the U.S.?

I know that sounds crazy, but wait a second and see.

Yesterday we wrote, "The cycle of violence is fueled by arms and ammunition. The U.S. injected weaponry into Libya and those weapons are now in the hands of violent extremists in Mali. Where will the weapons that the Obama administration is injecting into the Syrian conflict end up?

Perhaps it is time for America to stop arming terrorists."

Now, after a bit more study, we come to understand that the Malian forces fighting the Islamists in Northern Mali received over $9 million in military aid from the U.S.

So we have armed both sides in this struggle. Who wins? The arms manufactureres, of course. The innocent civilians caught in the middle can only lose.

 

Remember Houla: Syria May 25, 2012

From Jordanian Palestinian hip-hop artist El-Far3i, called "Birds of Houla""Tonight, the smell of blood coming from the north is torturing me / Tonight, children of Gaza and Houla will play together / But I feel that from heaven / Their eyes are observing me / the observers, shabiha, and envoys." [More: song]

Syrian painter Heba Akkad said she could only think about Houla. "I really tried to paint something else but I couldn't."  Click here for a clear image of Her piece, "Night in al-Houla."

 

108 people died in Hula on May 25, 2012. Rupert Colville of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said... fewer than 20 of the dead were killed by artillery fire...most of them slaughtered in their homes. Women and children were shot at close range. Some had their throats slit, others had their eyes gouged out.

Sometimes the government is the terrorist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 14, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Zero Dark Thirty vs. Guantanamo: guess who wins...

Google it, my friends. There are ten times as many hits for Zero Dark Thirty (239,000,000 results) as there are for Guantanamo (34,900,000 results).

More people know more about a fantasy movie than they do about a critical site in today's global interactions. Guantanamo, if you study it a bit, is a site for:

• illegal detentions,
• illegal torture,
• evasion of the Rule of Law,
• excuses for hiding information from the American public,
• a feable means to try and terrorize Islamists, and
• an unparalleled recruitment tool for 'al-Qaeda' groups.

It's that last one that really bothers us. Americans are deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to understanding the dangers that Guantanamo generates...not for the prisoners held there, but for us! We are the ones who will be attacked with Guantanamo as a critical component of the justification of the terrorist attacks to come. Read the terrorist literature and you'll see how often it is mentioned.

We wish we knew how to educate U.S. citizens about the realities of the world they live in and about the truth concerning how the actions of the Obama administration generate waves of hatred that will continue to build the ranks of 'al-Qaeda' groups and create more and more terrorism. And some of that terrorism will be directed at us! If we all understood, we'd close that place down in a day.

Yes, it's not Obama alone, of course, and his drones, lies, blind-eyes toward corruption, support of vicious regimes, and ..well, you know, all the bad stuff. Other administrations before and probably after will continue to behave in long-term-self-defeating ways. But as the Commander in Chief, as the most powerful political leader on the face of the earth (as I am sure he likes to think of himself), as Mr. President he could be doing a lot more to change the way America is percieved in the world, and the level of anger directed toward us, and the consequent damage we will have to endure.

'Revenge' shows 238,000,000 results.

January 14, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact-dedicated to steering all of us toward more peaceful tomorrows.