6 - 2011 - Antiwar.com Blog

Riyadh Eyes the Nuke

Contrary to the groupthink so pervasive in the military-industrial complex, there is absolutely zero evidence that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. Even top intelligence officials conceded in their National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.’s) that such claims were false and unsubstantiated. Unforunately,the lies and propaganda of the military-industrial complex are spreading, much like in the run up to the war in Iraq.

While Saudi Arabia and Iran have been foes ever since the Iranian Revolution, comments from Prince Turki al-Faisal are raising tensions between the regional powerhouses. Buying into the Iran-has-a-bomb line, Faisal said, “We [Saudi Arabia] cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don’t. It’s as simple as that. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit.”

Curiously enough, some argue that Iran attaining a nuclear bomb would set off an arms race in the Middle East and thus must be stopped from doing so. Such ill informed comments from Prince Faisal only help bolster many of the warmongers’ claims. After all, it is far too apparent that the security interests of any nation are now the concerns of the United States.

Faisal did have two important and noble points, however: the Middle East should be a nuclear weapons free zone (including Israel), and that a military strike against Iran by the United States or Israel would be self-defeating.

US Expands Drone War

The United States has now expanded its (c)overt drone war to a 6th country: Somalia. Naturally, the justification was that if America just sat back and did nothing, al-Shabab, a Somali terrorist group, would attack the United States:

“As the al-Qaeda core has weakened under our unyielding pressure, it has looked increasingly to these other groups and individuals to take up its cause, including its goal of striking the United States,” said Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser. “From the territory it controls in Somalia,” he said, “al-Shabab continues to call for strikes against the United States.”

Of course, due to America’s policy of ambiguity, it isn’t known for certain whether or not this was the first strike of America’s drone war on Somalia. Civilians and militants alike reported seeing or hearing multiple airstrikes and other attacks using military helicopters.

America’s terrorism policy will only perpetuate more hatred and violence towards the United States, especially as al-Shabab’s operations have gone international:

Over the past year, al-Shabab has focused more openly outside Somalia in its statements and targets. In July, the group carried out suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 76 people, including one American. Uganda is one of the countries providing troops to a peacekeeping force that protects the U.S.-backed government in Somalia.

Al-Shabab obviously does not take kind to foreign intervention, whether it be by America or the African Union. While their ability to launch and coordinate attacks outside of the African continent remains to be seen, al-Shabab will continue to flourish in chaotic Somalia.

Hotel Attack Will Only Prolong American Adventurism in Afghanistan

A common misconception of blowback is that retaliation is limited to foreign governments and citizens. If this were to be the case, Chechen terrorists would not be bombing airports and the Taliban would not be bombing hotels. The Taliban’s coordinated attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul was an attack against both foreign and domestic oppressive forces. The aim of the attack was straightforward:

“We had three main goals in attacking the hotel,” the Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said after the attack. “We wanted to target as many foreign advisers as we could, as many provincial governors as we could, and bring tension to Kabul on the same day of the security-transition conference.”

Foreigners and Afghans alike were killed. This brazen attack also accomplished the third goal of bringing tension to the “transition” conference. As if the trust deficit between American and Afghanistan were not enough, this will surely widen it.

Additionally, this attack comes at a crucial time for Barack Obama who just recently announced plans to withdraw 33,000 American troops by the fall of 2012. One of Obama’s justifications for starting to withdraw troops, other than political stratagem to appease a war-weary American public, was that the Afghans are becoming increasingly capable of dealing with the Taliban and other security issues. As the Afghans were unable to stop a raid in a hotel, NATO air support was called in to ultimately finish the job.

While Obama has declared to bring home 33,000 troops by next fall, and all troops by 2014, it will be incidents like these that prolong American involvement in the “Graveyard of Empires,” despite all of the “progress” that Obama and his advisors claim to see.

The March of Obama’s Dark Cynicism

Obama spent several minutes this afternoon droning on and stuttering about the economy, injecting words like “folks” and “busted” into his typically boring speech as recommended by his handlers to get the plebes to relate more to His Harvardness. Among the many things he mentioned as a solution to the United States’ unprecedentedly massive deficit and debt are raising taxes on corporate jet owners, oil companies, other rich boogeymen, and salami-slicing entitlements, and more. Otherwise, he said, we won’t be able to subsidize the waste of young life that is grades 13-17, aka “college”; we won’t have medical research despite the fact that, well, we will; and gasp! a possible threat somehow to the efficacy of food inspection — you don’t want to die of e. coli do you? DO YOU?

But you know what jet owners he didn’t mention? Boeing and other military contractors. And rightly so — why bring attention to the biggest crony capitalists on the face of the earth, those who are most responsible for our deficits and destroyed economy. Those to whom we are forced to donate trillions of dollars and from whom we get NOTHING of use. That would just make Americans pay more attention to the real damage to our economy and liberties done by his glorious little “humanitarian” bombing projects across the earth.

Later, Obama repeated the Benghazi Myth of Libya intervention, as usual.

“This operation is limited in time and scope,” something he said in the beginning — “days, not weeks” — but since then we have no update on the exact “limit.” More rhetoric included Gadhafi’s alleged sponsoring of terror against the United States — 25 years ago, way before we had reengaged with his regime. This is all yawn-inducing stuff, rehashed from other cynical speeches, typical of the tortured justifications of the Bush and Obama administrations.

The president then said something so breathtaking on the question of the War Powers Act that I had to rewind to make sure I heard him right:

“I don’t even have to get to the constitutional question.”

The President of the United States, a so-called Constitutional scholar, and whose job it is to uphold the Constitution, thinks there are times, let alone of WAR, when he can take action without even thinking about the document that is the framework of the very entity that he himself heads?

Okay. Does anyone see this getting better?

Costs of War, Was It Worth It?

Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies conducted research on the costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan:

The final bill will run up to at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project Costs of War by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

[…] Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.

In human terms, 224 000 to 258 000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125 000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare, and nutrition. An additional 365 000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people – equal to the combined population of Connecticut and Kentucky – have been displaced.

To a certain extent, the true costs of these imperial adventures are not known, but results like these at least slightly help the American people (most of whom are relatively insulated from the costs of these wars) understand the damage and expense.

It’s also worth contemplating what the return on the investment was. It has been helpful to the expansion of the American Empire and has put dough in the pockets of the military industry, but the notion that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are more stable countries than they were ten years ago is almost laughable. Iraq’s “government, economy, legal systems, and basic services like electricity and water remain unstable,” corruption is widespread, sectarian and insurgency-based violence is again on the rise, and governance there is slipping towards dictatorship with the Maliki government harassing media outlets who speak ill of him, harsh repression and crackdowns of Arab Spring protesters, and a closed political system. Afghanistan is in ruins: it is one of the poorest, most corrupt nations in the world, nation building efforts are failing, violence and civilian deaths keep hitting record-setting highs, and the U.S. is in an unending and dangerous quagmire there. Pakistan is increasingly unstable with rife poverty and corruption, pockets of extremists in the autonomous tribal regions are very strong, well over 1,000 civilians, and possibly a few thousand have been killed by Predator drones, and the dictatorial government relies on U.S. aid in the billions to even function at all.

These countries themselves are obviously worse off for all this blood and money spent, but what about the American people? Are they safer? Has the threat of terrorism been reduced? Actually no, it has dramatically increased due to these three adventures.

The leaders of the U.S. government should be indictable for not only wasting the resources and lives lost by these wars, but for the grave danger they’ve put the American people in as a result of them.

John Yoo is to Guantanamo What Harold Koh is to Libya

State Department legal advisor Harold Koh is turning out to be the Obama administration’s John Yoo. He spoke at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday to explain his ridiculous interpretation of the War Power Resolution which Obama favored over the advice of his top military and administration legal advisers.

“When U.S. forces engage in a limited military mission that involves limited exposure for U.S. troops and limited risk of serious escalation and employs limited military means, we are not in hostilities of the kind envisioned by the War Powers Resolution,” State Department legal advisor Harold Koh told the committee.

[…]The discussion took a surprisingly personal turn when Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) called Koh’s argument “really pretty incredible,” and noted that U.S. planes and drones are engaged in the mission.

[…]“I would guess at night, however people of your category give high-fives, you’re talking to other academics about this cute argument that has been utilized,” Corker said. “But I would say to you that I think you’ve undermined the credibility of this administration; I think you’ve undermined the integrity of the War Powers Act; and I think by taking this very narrow approach, you’ve done a great disservice to our country.”

The conclusion of the hearing saw the passing of a resolution authorizing U.S. involvement in Libya by a vote of 14-5.

Many have been criticizing Koh not just for an absurd legal position but for “selling out” given his past as an outspoken critic of expansive Executive war powers. NPR interviewed “Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame who fought alongside Koh to protest a broad view of executive power that became popular during the Bush years.” She said:

Policies I believe he would have found highly questionable if they had been carried out by the Bush administration, he now is willing to so affirmatively defend.

Cato’s Gene Healy wrote about this last week:

Considering Koh’s background, the whole episode offers a cautionary tale about the corrupting effects of power. Harvard’s Jack Goldsmith notes that “for a quarter century before heading up State-Legal, Koh was the leading and most vocal academic critic of presidential unilateralism in war.” On the strength of that reputation, Koh rose to the deanship of Yale Law School in 2004.

[…] Yet the implications of Koh’s position today are that the president can rain down destruction via cruise missiles and robot death kites anywhere in the world, and unless an American soldier might get hurt, neither the Constitution nor the War Powers Resolution are offended.

Office of Legal Counsel adviser John Yoo during the Bush administration was so accommodating in his interpretation of law and executive power that Bush and his team placed the greatest emphasis on his counsel, which provided legal sanction to Bush war crimes, especially regarding torture. The Obama administration has relied on Koh’s legal advice on everything from detention policies to drone strikes and now on Libya. Every administration needs their ~~lawyer~~ liar.