Tag: Air Strikes

More Black Sites, More Drones

July 25, 2011: rosencrantz

As the the U.S. Congress and President negotiate about whether to pay its bills and which social programs to cut, funding for secret prisons and killer robots continue unabated.

Jeremy Scahill recently broke a story about a CIA secret prison in Mogadishu, where “terror suspects” are rendered for extra-legal storage and interrogation.

As usual following such stories exposing imperial wrongdoing, “news” media sycophants are then deployed to spin the facts by uncritically quoting anonymous government officials.

This Mogadishu CIA black site prison is just part of the larger story of the “Global War On Terror”, began by Bush 43 and continued by Obama, albeit without reference to Bush’s absurd title.

Sauron’s gaze now turns to the not-so-green pastures of Yemen and Somalia, sending forth riderless fell-beasts to spy on and kill those within proximity of those suspected of standing against the Imperial Will:

The Obama administration has escalated the existing drone program and begun a new CIA drone campaign in Yemen (one that just killed numerous people over the weekend); it also, contrary to public denials, provided the arms to Saudi Arabia to attack a rebel group in Northern Yemen.  Yemen is also the justification for Obama’s attempt to institutionalize a due-process-free assassination program aimed at U.S. citizens.  The administration just commenced a separate drone campaign in Somalia.

Presumably, these not-so-new targets of U.S. beneficence will suffer the same drone inflicted civilian slaughterings that regularly transpire (despite denials by government spokesliars) in the other terror war fronts.

Another Drone War

April 26, 2011: rosencrantz

The U.S. has extended its Drone War into Libya, as if to commemorate the centennial of the first aerial bombardment of history, when Italian Lieutenant Giulio Gaviotti dropped hand grenades from a Taube monoplane (pictured above, let) on targets near modern Tripoli.

It wasn’t long before the Ottomans were complaining (and the Italians were denying) that hospitals were being bombed and civilians killed.

At the time, this innovation was praised by proto-fascists and Nobel peace laureates alike — “anticipating Barak Obama’s faith in aerial bombardment as a tool of progress for humanity”.

The Kingdom of Italy’s claims to Libya could be traced back to the 1884 Conference of Berlin, when European powers divided Africa up into zones of control — with no input from Africans themselves, of course — thereby initiating, in the words of ANSWER’s Brian Becker, “the dynamic transformation of capitalism into a system of global imperialism.”

Fast forward, and the inheritors of colonial wealth are banding together once again to use their latest technology — vastly more destructive than grenades thrown from monoplanes — to bomb Libya.

Imperial functionaries tout the “precision capability” of Drones, but I suspect that their precision would be doubted by the children whose bodies they routinely blow apart — follow this link to glimpse the mindset of the trigger-happy Drone operators who sit behind computer terminals in Nevada.

The Specter of “Genocide”

April 26, 2011: rosencrantz

Although he continues to avoid referring to the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in such terms, Obama used the specter of “genocide” to justify U.S. military intervention into Libya.  But historian A. Kuperman argues that this is an exaggeration that served as (another) false pretense for war.  No genocide has taken place in cities that Gaddafi did recapture, he argues, and neither did Gaddafi “ever threaten civilian massacre in Benghazi, as Obama alleged”:

The “no mercy’’ warning, of March 17, targeted rebels only, as reported by The New York Times, which noted that Libya’s leader promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away.’’ Khadafy even offered the rebels an escape route and open border to Egypt, to avoid a fight “to the bitter end.’’

False pretenses for war are routine, sadly, but by prolonging the conflict — Admiral Mullen thinks it is “moving toward a stalemate” — the number of civilians killed will steadily rise and likely overtake what might have transpired as a result of Gaddafi’s fight against domestic insurgents.

Left Vs. Left on Libyan Intervention

April 4, 2011: rosencrantz

The U.S./NATO intervention, command of which is gradually being shared with other European and North American allies (as well as token contributions from a small number of Arab states), has divided opinion on the left, with one side arguing that the humanitarian crisis posed by Gaddafi’s threat to wipe out his domestic enemies justified military intervention by Western powers, and the other side remaining distrustful of the motives, legality, and putative beneficial consequences of Western military interventions into resource-rich African and Middle Eastern lands.

Exemplifying this division is the debate between Juan Cole and critics of his “Open Letter to the Left on Libya“, which argued the justice of the (UNSC sanctioned / NATO executed) intervention follows from its humanitarian aim, its Libyan support, its international legality, and its limited scope. In short:

… in Libya intervention was demanded by the people being massacred as well as by the regional powers, was authorized by the UNSC, and could practically attain its humanitarian aim of forestalling a massacre through aerial bombardment of murderous armored brigades. And, the intervention could be a limited one and still accomplish its goal.

Left critics of the intervention have questioned all of these premises, including Gaddafi’s power to successfully carry out his threats to annihilate his opposition. (See for example this overview of Socialist literature on the subject.)

In my last post, I argued that the selective application of humanitarian intervention exposes it as whitewash.

The touted degree of international support can also be doubted.  As Philip Hiro discusses, the foreign intervention in Libya has exposed divisions within and among international security institutions — the Arab League, EU, NATO, UN Security Council — and has served as an occasion for the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to “adopt a unified stance on a matter of war and peace.”

The BRIC countries, representing 40% of the worlds population abstained from the Security Council vote, while the Asia Times clarifies that Arab League support for the intervention was really a “House of Saud led operation” — “only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone.”  (Nevertheless, as Siddharth Varadarajan points out, this fact alone does not “absolve them of their failure to mount an effective political challenge to the drive for war.” Thanks to MTK, SF mayoral candidate and friend of the blog, for pointing to these discussions in comments).

The pro-intervention forces may have taken the steps to secure international legality for the operation, but its legality has been questioned on domestic legal grounds, since according to the U.S. Constitution the President lacks the authority to make war without Congressional approval. Ohio Rep. Kucinich is the leading the charge on this point, insisting that the rule of law should also apply to the President.

But Cole’s most contentious premise is his faith that the intervention can be limited in scope.  That is why the implausibility of a humanitarian motive is important to consider, for once its talons puncture flesh, the imperial eagle is unlikely to release until it is time to feed.

T. Miles exposes Cole’s false dilemma succinctly:

…as past history going back to the 1880s shows, that inviting the global imperial power to save them will enslave the Libyan people to a more subtle yoke in the coming years. This may be better than Gadaffi’s death squads, but that accepts the fallacy which goes completely unnoticed by Professor Cole that there are not simply two choices: domestic tyrant or Pax Imperia.

Along these lines, another of Cole’s reasons to support intervention — that the leaders of the uprising in Bengazi are “simply the notables of the city”  — has been rendered untrue by the logic of intervention itself: it is now Canadians and expatriate residents of Langley, VA that are filling leadership roles.

Cole’s narrow focus also misses how the attack sends a clear message to other outlier regimes: “no matter what, no matter the inducements or pressure, never ever give up chemical weapons or a nuclear weapons program. Doing so will not ensure that the U.S. does not attack you—on the contrary, it will make it much more likely.”

Humanitarian Intervention

March 28, 2011: rosencrantz

The idea that the U.S./European intervention is motivated by humanitarian concerns appears plausible at first glance because Gaddafi was slaughtering protesters and openly threatening to slaughter more — so “intervention” could be sold as a humanitarian act.

But a bit of critical reflection on the wider context of this policy reveals how shallow such an explanation is.

First, there is the question of consistency.  If the U.S. (et. al.) were motivated by humanitarian concern, then what of concern for the protesters being slaughtered in the streets of other autocratic states, like Syria, Yemen or Bahrain?

The White House managed to verbally condemn the crackdown in Syria, but the Yemeni and Bahraini regimes, important assets in the imperial project, get a pass or even support –  Secretary of State Clinton asserted that Yemen had the “sovereign right” to invite Saudi Arabian forces into the country to violently crush dissent.

And what about Israel?  Siddharth Varadarajan asks the multi-billion dollar question:

Why does only Libya get attacked or referred to the International Criminal Court and not other countries? If there is one country in the Middle East which has threatened international peace and security for decades and which, even as these words are being written, has launched its air force, yet again, against a defenceless civilian population, it is Israel. Yet never have the cheerleaders for the war on Libya argued in favour of a mandatory no-fly zone to protect the Palestinian and Lebanese people from Israeli airstrikes.

This selective application of humanitarian intervention exposes it as a whitewash.

Furthermore, if concern for humanity was a motivating factor for the U.S. (et. al.), then what of concern for its own citizens? Writing in the NYT, Bob Herbert reminds us that this “humanitarian intervention” is also “pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war… while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.”

“Humanitarian Concern”, like “Spreading Democracy”, is a PR label cynically used to sell imperial military projects to a (still-too-naive) domestic market, as well to serve as cover for complicit (and equally cynical) international institutions.

So, too, is the use of the euphemistic term “no-fly zone”, which had some Arab League support until it turned out to mean the shock and awe of missile strikes to inaugurate more or less unbounded military action, with its own inevitable civilian casualties.

But if not concern for humanity, then what motivates the U.S.(et. al.) attack on Libya?

Well, there is always the geopolitics of a dwindling oil supply. Or profits for the military-industrial-complex, which over decades gets to provide weapons to both Gaddafi and the coalition forces attacking him.

Cha-ching.

This We’ll Defend

March 7, 2011: rosencrantz

It can be rough for people living under the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan, many of whom have been liberated from existence by NATO gunships in at least 3 air strikes in the past couple of weeks – scores of women and children here, 9 boys here — thus continuing the dark trend that saw 2010 as the worst year yet for civilian deaths of the Afghanistan war.

General Petraeus, current commander of the the ISAF, had to apologize about the slaughter of the 9 boys, but reportedly tried to dodge responsibility for civilian deaths resulting from a separate operation by suggesting  that “residents had invented stories, or even injured their children, to pin the blame on U.S. forces.”

“Killing 60 people, and then blaming the killing on those same people, rather than apologizing for any deaths? This is inhuman,” one Afghan official said. “This is a really terrible situation.”

Johnathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution suggests that this is how one inflicts “horrible burns on a bunch of kids and yet sleep soundly at night” and points to an historical precedent to such behavior — Nixon allowed himself to wonder whether the famous picture of wailing children running from a U.S. napalm strike was “a fix”.

Meanwhile, speaking on the situation in Libya, Obama said he wants to make sure that the U.S. “has the full capacity to act” in case “defenseless civilians” find themselves “trapped and in great danger.”

But, in Afghanistan, it is often precisely the exercise of U.S. capacities that puts “defenseless civilians” — such as the 9 wood-gathering boys ripped to shreds by NATO helicopters — not only in “great danger” but in caskets.

Those boys now join the 2,500 other people killed by the 101st Airborne Division since they arrived in eastern Afghanistan last June.

(The images of the wounded Afghan children in the above collage come from the website of The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), who don’t shy away from illustrating their updates with images that reflect the violence of the U.S. occupation of their country.)

Enough about Assange: What WikiLeaks has Revealed

December 29, 2010: rosencrantz

By focusing on the personalities or philosophy behind Wikileaks, in addition to the Imperial and Corporate reactions to its successes thus far, it is easy to lose focus on the actual substance of the leaks themselves. So here is an incomplete list of significant revelations emerging from Wikileaks in 2010, summarized from a list of headlines compiled by G. Greewald:

UPDATE: Here is another round-up of what Wikileaks revelations, compiled by CBS news.

Swedish Documentary about Wikileaks

December 15, 2010: rosencrantz

Here is an informative Swedish documentary on Wikileaks:

Tanks Giving

November 25, 2010: rosencrantz

The U.S. and its NATO allies are introducing the Abrams tanks to Afghanistan this holiday season, despite the rise in civilian casualties — such as Asan and Slima, pictured above — brought on by the recent intensification of air strikes, in which more than 1000 bombs and missiles were fired in October.

Up until now, NATO has avoided using tanks in Afghanistan for fear of reminding the Afghans of the tank heavy Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

According to the AP, Colonel Dave Lapan explained to reporters in Washington that “American tanks would have a much different role than the Soviet tanks, which he said had been used to ‘oppress’ the Afghans.”

U.S. tanks don’t oppress Afghans, you see – they “protect” them from “insurgents”.

Meanwhile, a recent poll taken by the International Council on Security and Development finds that 92% of young men in Kandahar and Helmand provinces know nothing about 9-11, the putative reason the U.S. has been occupying their country for almost a decade.

In any case, many Afghans themselves refuse to give thanks to the occupiers of their country, choosing instead to lodge complaints with U.S. and Afghan officials about the destruction of their trees, crops, homes and loved ones.

Nevertheless, in the eyes of Imperial Functionaries, such destruction can be seen as a good thing:

Although military officials are apologetic in public, they maintain privately that the tactic has a benefit beyond the elimination of insurgent bombs. By making people travel to the district governor’s office to submit a claim for damaged property, “in effect, you’re connecting the government to the people,” the senior officer said.

Success!

Nuclear Explosions

November 16, 2010: rosencrantz

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has made a beautiful and terrifying video mapping the 2053 nuclear explosions that have taken place on our planet between 1945 and 1998. Enjoy!

I wonder if this has anything to do with cancer rates?

(video via C&L)