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Choosing who should die: Obama plays God

Caught between Iraq and a hard place, President Obama has chosen to select who to arm and who should die.

Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and the hundreds of drone sites attacked all left a legacy of innocents killed and increased hatred for the United States.

Dear Mr. President: the Assad opposition is riddled with actors who are not on our side. Arming them strengthens our enemies. Don't take the politically easy way out. Please decide not to send more arms and ammunition to anyone. Your policies have already strengthened al-Qaeda's recruitment song.

May you have the courage of thr right path to more peaceful tomorrows without the delusions of short-term solutions. Inshallah

June 18, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. Policy and Terrorism:

Governments don’t like political justifications for terrorism. They prefer to focus on almost any cause other than dissatisfaction with American action. It’s much easier to deal with putting the blame on psychosis, religion, fanaticism, and irrational acts. Add ethnicity, nationalism/separatism, poverty, economic disadvantage, and globalization to the mix. Just don’t mention America's violent, deadly operations undertaken to fulfill policy goals.

    One might take a moment to listen to the rhetoric of terrorist organizations and the arguments they use to recruit new members. There is often a logic (sometimes twisted) and a factual basis (often unattributed) in their professed viewpoints. Their vision may be skewed, but it effectively persuades many to radicalization, and some to violence. Revenge for politically based military action is a common theme, as is the slaughter of innocents. President Obama’s drones and the innocent civilians they kill are often mentioned.

    A "special edition" of Azan magazine, publiched by fighters in the Afghan-Pakistan region, glorified the bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 15, 2013, and considered them retribution for America's "war crimes" in Muslim countries. The 4-page issue was uploaded on a file-sharing website on May 8, 2013, and does not appear to have been officially released as yet. Referring to the attack as a "drone in America," the authors thanked the bombers for bringing "coolness to the hearts of millions of oppressed families worldwide," and justified it as revenge for the US military invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's support to Israel, and its alleged insults to religious sanctities like the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad. 

Here's what they wrote about President Barack Obama's pledge to bring the perpetrators [of the Boston bombings] to justice:

    "Is it 'just' that you oppress the rest of humanity and feel a right to be secure? What are YOU doing in Afghanistan? Why are your soldiers here? Who started this war? Certainly, YOU Mr. President and your predecessors and cronies who pretend to be the harmonious protectors of the world – indeed, you deserve to be put in the court of justice… But not any man-made court of justice… You are a criminal in the Court of Allah… So, let the world rejoice at the destruction that befell the great tyrant. And let America fear for more…"

    What may appear as mere hype actually works to convince some to join the violent jihad against the 'criminal' forces of Obama. This is especially true in regions where people have been directly affected by drones, and where the population has little access to views other than the terrorists themselves. It also works to stimulate rage in people far away, who sympathize with the plight of those innocents being attacked.

    You either agree with them or you don’t, but ignoring them is a mistake. And shaping counterterrorist policy without paying attention to foreign policy is a deadly mistake.

 

watch as the drones fly; count the civilians as they die

One of the best graphics I've seen lately: http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/

 

List of children killed by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen

List of children killed by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen

Compiled from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports

PAKISTAN
Name | Age | Gender
Noor Aziz | 8 | male
Abdul Wasit | 17 | male
Noor Syed | 8 | male
Wajid Noor | 9 | male
Syed Wali Shah | 7 | male
Ayeesha | 3 | female
Qari Alamzeb | 14| male
Shoaib | 8 | male
Hayatullah KhaMohammad | 16 | male
Tariq Aziz | 16 | male
Sanaullah Jan | 17 | male
Maezol Khan | 8 | female
Nasir Khan | male
Naeem Khan | male
Naeemullah | male
Mohammad Tahir | 16 | male
Azizul Wahab | 15 | male
Fazal Wahab | 16 | male
Ziauddin | 16 | male
Mohammad Yunus | 16 | male
Fazal Hakim | 19 | male
Ilyas | 13 | male
Sohail | 7 | male
Asadullah | 9 | male
khalilullah | 9 | male
Noor Mohammad | 8 | male
Khalid | 12 | male
Saifullah | 9 | male
Mashooq Jan | 15 | male
Nawab | 17 | male
Sultanat Khan | 16 | male
Ziaur Rahman | 13 | male
Noor Mohammad | 15 | male
Mohammad Yaas Khan | 16 | male
Qari Alamzeb | 14 | male
Ziaur Rahman | 17 | male
Abdullah | 18 | male
Ikramullah Zada | 17 | male
Inayatur Rehman | 16 | male
Shahbuddin | 15 | male
Yahya Khan | 16 |male
Rahatullah |17 | male
Mohammad Salim | 11 | male
Shahjehan | 15 | male
Gul Sher Khan | 15 | male
Bakht Muneer | 14 | male
Numair | 14 | male
Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
Ihsanullah | 16 | male
Luqman | 12 | male
Jannatullah | 13 | male
Ismail | 12 | male
Taseel Khan | 18 | male
Zaheeruddin | 16 | male
Qari Ishaq | 19 | male
Jamshed Khan | 14 | male
Alam Nabi | 11 | male
Qari Abdul Karim | 19 | male
Rahmatullah | 14 | male
Abdus Samad | 17 | male
Siraj | 16 | male
Saeedullah | 17 | male
Abdul Waris | 16 | male
Darvesh | 13 | male
Ameer Said | 15 | male
Shaukat | 14 | male
Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
Salman | 12 | male
Fazal Wahab | 18 | male
Baacha Rahman | 13 | male
Wali-ur-Rahman | 17 | male
Iftikhar | 17 | male
Inayatullah | 15 | male
Mashooq Khan | 16 | male
Ihsanullah | 16 | male
Luqman | 12 | male
Jannatullah | 13 | male
Ismail | 12 | male
Abdul Waris | 16 | male
Darvesh | 13 | male
Ameer Said | 15 | male
Shaukat | 14 | male
Inayatur Rahman | 17 | male
Adnan | 16 | male
Najibullah | 13 | male
Naeemullah | 17 | male
Hizbullah | 10 | male
Kitab Gul | 12 | male
Wilayat Khan | 11 | male
Zabihullah | 16 | male
Shehzad Gul | 11 | male
Shabir | 15 | male
Qari Sharifullah | 17 | male
Shafiullah | 16 | male
Nimatullah | 14 | male
Shakirullah | 16 | male
Talha | 8 | male

YEMEN
Afrah Ali Mohammed Nasser | 9 | female
Zayda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 7 | female
Hoda Ali Mohammed Nasser | 5 | female
Sheikha Ali Mohammed Nasser | 4 | female
Ibrahim Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 13 | male
Asmaa Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 9 | male
Salma Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | female
Fatima Abdullah Mokbel Salem Louqye | 3 | female
Khadije Ali Mokbel Louqye | 1 | female
Hanaa Ali Mokbel Louqye | 6 | female
Mohammed Ali Mokbel Salem Louqye | 4 | male
Jawass Mokbel Salem Louqye | 15 | female
Maryam Hussein Abdullah Awad | 2 | female
Shafiq Hussein Abdullah Awad | 1 | female
Sheikha Nasser Mahdi Ahmad Bouh | 3 | female
Maha Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 12 | male
Soumaya Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 9 | female
Shafika Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 4 | female
Shafiq Mohammed Saleh Mohammed | 2 | male
Mabrook Mouqbal Al Qadari | 13 | male
Daolah Nasser 10 years | 10 | female
AbedalGhani Mohammed Mabkhout | 12 | male
Abdel- Rahman Anwar al Awlaki | 16 | male
Abdel-Rahman al-Awlaki | 17 | male
Nasser Salim | 19

 

and away goes tax money, down the drain...are the contractors worth it?

In case you were wondering if the U.S. is still, after all those reports, charges,  and convictions, heavily invested in mercenary forces as part of our foreign policy:

[these are DoD Numbers]

                         Contractors         U.S        non-U.S      Host Country

                                                      Military      Mil.            Mil.

 

Afghanistan          109, 564          31,814       39,480           38,270

Iraq                             9,000            2,314           4,621            2,065

Other
Countries                 18,843            8,764           9,297               782

TOTALS             137,407        42,892      53,398         41,117

And then we started wondering  about just what those ‘other country’ 28,000 are doing…and who they are doing it to…and what are we getting out of it…

Taxpayer monies are going down the drain into the sewers of the manufacturers of weapons and private ‘security’ companies.  And the result:  the number of terrorist attacks, globally, is rising, not falling. In some places, like Pakistan, the number of terrorists acts has risen in proportion to the military aid we deliver.

Maybe it's time to test a new theory. Less military spending will reduce overall violence.

Obama’s Futile Drone War Kills Mullah Nazir…with virtually no effect.

In an exercise of useless, perhaps worse than useless, violence President Obama has carried out yet another assassination of a ‘high valued’ target, i.e., a man Obama declared worthy of death.

But let’s not make this personal. Targeted killing is a policy element and can be evaluated rationally.

Let’s look at the target: His loyalty was to Pakistan and he was known to fight against NATO forces in Afghanistan as well as Taliban fighters. He was known to shelter al-Qaeda operatives. At first glance Nazir seems a logical target.

A closer look reveals the error of this decision. We are ostensibly about to remove our forces from the area. President Obama is well on his way to winding down our involvement in Afghanistan. The threat of Nazir against NATO forces then becomes irrelevant, and perhaps is outweighed by the damage this death causes: to relationships between the U.S. and Pakistan, to U.S. credibility, to stability in Pakistan, and to the support it gives to other terrorist organizations.

U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have repeatedly weakened our relationship with Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf who has denounced the strikes as “harmful” and “ineffective.” He noted that although Washington claims that the targets are militants, “casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims.” [PressTV] The real effects are noted around the world, further lowering America’s falling credibility.

Nazir was the strongest stabilizing force in the multiple-tribal district of South Waziristan. Nazir’s calming influence in the region he controlled was not insignificant. Warring tribes were forced to maintain non-violent relationships. He successfully quelled the ethnic Uzbek killing spree, but not before more than 200 Waziri elders were killed by members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).[BBC-1] Pakistani officials praised Nazier for driving out foreign fighters from Pakistan.

With Nazir’s death comes the specter of the resurgence of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan group (TTP). It also raises the possibility that the IMU will again become a problem for Pervez. The TTP, partners with the Mehsud tribe, have been attacking Pakistani targets since 2007. [BBC-2] This further damages U.S.-Pakistan relations.

And the immediate result highlights the major weakness of these targeted killings. There was no immediate effect.

Nazir was quickly replaced, right after Nazir’s funeral. The Taliban in South Waziristan have named Bahwal Khan, who is also known as Salahuddin Ayubi, to lead the Mullah Nazir Group. [longWarJournal]  According to U.S. officials, Ayubi maintains close ties to al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and a host of terrorist groups operating in the Afghan-Pakistan region, US intelligence officials.

In an amazing show of persistent ignorance of the realities on the ground, the Pentagon said Nazir’s death would be helpful to the United States and its Pakistani partners. [Tribune] Perhaps it is not ignorance. Perhaps it reveals the need to justify U.S. actions, regardless of the reality of their effectiveness. We’ve seen this before as the failed tactics of Vietnam, the COIN program, were transferred to fail again in Iraq, and then, unbelievably, again in Afghanistan. When will we ever learn?

January 4, 2013 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

The Khyber Attacks and Pakistan’s passive support of terror in the FATA

The Khyber Attacks and Pakistan’s passive support of terror in the FATA

The newspaper Dawn reported today, “JAMRUD: At least 19 people, among them women and children, were killed and 71 others injured when a powerful car bomb ripped through the Jamrud bazaar in Khyber Agency on Monday, officials and witnesses said.”  [Dawn]

 

This latest terrorist attack in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) of Pakistan occurred in the Khyber Agency. Jamrud is the gateway to the famed Khyber Pass, logistically important to NATO troops in Afghanistan.

No group claimed responsibility but the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been active in the area and usually claim that their attacks are retaliatory for Taliban members killed by NATO, U.S., or Pakistani forces.  One raid was termed retaliation for the death of Osama bin Laden. Earlier in the year they kidnapped and then executed 15 Frontier Constabulary. TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said, “We have killed these personnel. This is revenge for the killing of our comrades in Khyber by Pakistani Forces. We will soon take revenge for other operations too."

The FATA is rife with terrorists. While local officials bemoan their presence, the central government has taken little action to curb groups such as the TTP.

The government of Pakistan has taken almost no action against the terrorist groups in the FATA. This neglect has put an enormous burden on local officials; one that they cannot handle. TTP, the Haqqani Network and the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group are left to terrorize the region and slip into Afghanistan without interference. The U.S. drone attacks are still going on, but they have little long lasting effect.

One particularly disturbing result of the Pakistani government’s non-involvement is the emergence of the “Lashkar-e-Khorasan (LeK), the group’s only purpose is to identify, capture and execute persons allegedly working for what is described as a ‘web of local spies’ created by the CIA.” [SATP]

 

This passive support for the terrorists in the FATA can only backfire on Pakistan. As groups such as the TTP and the Haqqani network grow stronger they have begun to target government forces as well as citizens. It will only get worse until Pakistan’s central government takes a stand against terror.

December 18, 2012 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feinstein Statement on CIA Detention, Interrogation Report

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Diane Feinstein (Democrat, California) said today, “I strongly believe that the creation of long-term, clandestine ‘black sites’ and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes."

We like her, and we hope she gets permission to open the report publicly. After all, we paid for it.

Zero Dark Thirty: The Boredom, the Joke, and the Lie.

Zero Dark Thirty: The Boredom, the Joke, and the Lie.
December 13, 2012 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

OMG, don't get me started. Too late! I'm already started. Boring! We saw this hyped up Zero Dark Thirty and were disappointed in a couple of ways. With a great opportunity to deliver a caper film about something that really matters, Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal delivered something less exciting, a little boring, and much less important. Yes, it is true that it is hard to draw folks in when they already know the ending, but one can at least try to, perhaps, give us some new facts, viewpoints, or insights to reward our patience. Even a trite view of the intensive Seal training that went into this mission would have been welcome; the mockup site, the over-and-over-till-perfect drills, Lee Marvin pushing the men to their limits and beyond...oops, that was The Dirty Dozen, a really great piece of film!

Zero Dark Thirty did a good job of scaring us with the loud noises of sometimes unexpected exposions, but otherwise left us to sit through a well-known tale while adding very little to our knowledge and understanding of...pretty much anything the film touched on.

The phone 'torture controversy' that the publicists have cooked up is far more controversial that the treatment of torture in the film. That's the joke. The distance between the film's torture and the reality of real-life torture is so far that one can hardly discern the stance of the film. The movie torturers barely show us the joy they get from hurting people for a good cause. You couldn't do that job unless that was true; it would rip you apart. The impact of torture on the prisoners is so mild, and they recover so quickly, that one wonders where the movie makers got their information: from TV, perhaps.

And the Lie? Well, there were a couple, but after all, Zero Dark Thirty is a Hollywood movie and we need some cutting, pasting, and cinetech to liven things up. The big lie, the capital L Lie, has to do with the role of torture in the hunt for Usama bin Laden. In fact, it wasn't important at all.

"After the examination of millions of pages of evidence, the chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee have publicly stated that coercive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding did not provide the information that led to bin Laden." [NYTimes]

There. You have it. Zero Dark Thirty is a just movie, that's all, and not a particularly good one, either.

 

 

 

The (In)Accuracy of Obama's Drone Strikes: Is 2% good enough?

The (In)Accuracy of Obama's Drone Strikes: Is 2% good enough?
November 11, 2012 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, (and who knows where else?): we are droning our way to failure. What began as a carefully planned elimination of specific terrorists has morphed into vaguely justified murder, sometimes of groups of people a drone-remote-operator in the U.S. thinks are" acting suspiciously". The resultant deaths of large numbers of innocent civilians cannot be justified rationally.

The blowback of anti-U.S. sentiment is enormous and we think the recruitment value of each strike surpasses the old Al Qaeda standby, Guantanamo.

President Obama assured us that the strikes were skillfully calculated to avoid civilian casualties. It just isn't so.

The American public needs to be educated about the facts, face the reality, and demand that our government find new ways to counter terrorism...ways that are more effective and less damaging to innocent civilians.

[If you don't want to wade through the verbiage you can skip to the end where the statistics are succinctly presented in a short table. Eating before reading is not recommended.]

The Law

The Constitution and international law provide a similar standard for the use of lethal force by states: intentionally killing is generally prohibited without judicial process – charge, trial and conviction – unless an individual presents an imminent threat of death or serious physical harm and lethal force is a last resort. We have replaced this with a bureaucratic process that excludes the judicial system. Some names remain on the list for months belying the imminent threat stricture. By substituting its own bureaucratic process for the due process required by the Constitution and international law, the executive is assuming the role of judge, jury, and executioner. [Center for Constitutional Rights]

The Obama Administration's Claim of Care (and Signature Strikes)

According to John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, “We only authorize a particular operation against a specific individual if we have a high degree of confidence that the individual being targeted is indeed the terrorist we are pursuing.”[The Wilson Center]

Unfortunately Brennan's assertion does not account for the vast majority of drone strikes. They are not against specific individuals, but rather against groups that appear to be militants. These attacks are called signature strikes.

This loophole gives the CIA broad killing power where a group is thought to be acting suspiciously. This has nothing at all to do with imminent threat. This bogus idea was perhaps born in 2003 when the CIA bought software that claimed to be able to identify terrorists from Predator drone videos. [NYTimes]  Yes, we know that sounds nutty, but the CIA bought into it to the tune of over US$20 million dollars. It appears to be a hoax.

When official reports indicate, as they commonly do, a certain number "of suspected militants were killed by drone strikes, but the identities and nationalities of the dead are unknown" one has to wonder how accurate the intelligence was, or if there was even any intelligence behind the strikes.

The accuracy of a drone strike fundamentally hinges on the accuracy of the intelligence on which the targeting is premised. An anonymous US official admitted that “[y]ou get information from intelligence channels and you don’t know how reliable it is or who the source was. The intelligence services have criteria, but most of the time the people making the decision have no idea what those criteria are.” [Stanford International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic]

The Mistakes

As recently as January, 2012 President Obama assured us that drone strikes “have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.” [BloombergNews] He must face the truth if we, the people, are ever to come to grips with it.

The truth is appalling. Only about 2% of those killed by drone strikes are militants, and the rest are innocent civilians, according to a joint study by Stanford Law School and New York University's School of Law. [CNN] The U.S. military count system assumes all combatant-aged killed by the strikes are militants unless post-strike investigations prove otherwise...but they don't do post-strike investigations, therefore all that they kill are considered valid targets.

Britain's The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were civilians, including 176 children. These strikes also injured an additional 1,228 - 1,362 individuals, according to the Stanford/NYU study. [CNN]

(There are a great many reports of outright mistakes. Here are a few.)

2012 Protests and Fury erupted in Yemen following an errant U.S. drone strike that killed 13 civilians on Sunday, Sept. 2nd. [wordpress]

2010 "A number of US raids in early January targeted Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Initially reported dead, but a later audio recording dispelled rumours of his death." [al Jazeera] So who died in these strikes?

2010 "At least nine people have been killed in a suspected US drone attack in northwestern Pakistan, intelligence officials say.Missiles hit a compound alleged to be used by Taliban fighters in Muhammad Khel, a town in North Waziristan, late on Friday. The identities of those killed in the attack were not immediately known."

2009 The case of Karim Khan, 45, a journalist from Machi Khel of North Waziristan. His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the  family’s guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve. ‘We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe.’ [DailyMail]

2006 [NYTimes] counterterrorism officials respond to a bogus Somali terrorism plot on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, according to previously undisclosed documents.

2003 The same CIA ws hoaxed into believing that it had software that could identify terrorists from Predator drone videos [NYTimes]

 

 CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan 2004–2012

Total US strikes: 350
Obama strikes: 298
Total reported killed: 2,593-3,378
Civilians reported killed: 475-885
Children reported killed: 176
Total reported injured: 1,252-1,401

US Covert Action in Yemen 2002–2012

Total confirmed US operations (all): 53-63
Total confirmed US drone strikes: 42-52
Possible extra US operations: 122-141
Possible extra US drone strikes: 66-79
Total reported killed (all): 362-1,052
Total civilians killed (all): 60-163
Children killed (all): 24-34

US Covert Action in Somalia 2007–2012

Total US strikes: 10-23
Total US drone strikes: 3-9
Total reported killed: 58-170
Civilians reported killed: 11-57
Children reported killed: 1-3