Month: October 2011

I wrote today about drone technology and how it is advancing faster than the public or the law can get a grip on it as the new weapon of choice in America’s many war zones. I mentioned how soldiers in Afghanistan will soon be able to carry drones in their backpacks and launch them from the ground there and how ubiquitous drones are in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, etc. – some US leaders are now even calling for their use domestically with local police and border control.

Spencer Ackerman has a post up at Danger Room cataloguing drone use in various war zones and then poses the important but still unanswered question about Libya, now that Gadhafi is dead:

It took Predator drones about three weeks from the start of NATO’s war against Moammar Gadhafi toarrive in the skies over Libya. Since then, they’ve been busy: from April 21 to 9 a.m. Central European Time today, the Predators have launched 145 strikes, according to Pentagon spokesman George Little.

By comparison, that’s way more than twice the 57 drone strikes so far this year in Pakistan, the central locale for the U.S. drone war, and significantly more than 2010’s entire all-time-high of 117 drone strikes in Pakistan.

The Predators did not let up after Libyan rebels captured Tripoli in late August. By then, the U.S. drones had dropped their Hellfire missiles 92 times in four months. In the remaining two months, the Predators slightly stepped up their deadly pace during the residual hunt for Moammar Gadhafi, with 52 more strikes.

But the Pentagon will not confirm that the Predator, or any other U.S. airframe, was involved in theNATO airstrike in Sirte preceding Gadhafi’s death.

…The question that the Pentagon still won’t answer: when will U.S. warplanes — manned and robotic — leave Libyan airspace? That war, Little said, has cost $1.1 billion as of September 30.

He also reminds us that for all the sorties and drone attacks and airstrikes the US-NATO have executed over Libya, the Obama administration refuses to concede it is a war. At the beginning of the Libya intervention, Obama claimed the War Powers Resolution was inapplicable, because he wasn’t at war. With regards to drones, they claimed “they are not a form a war or military aggression, but rather a police action in cooperation with sovereign governments,” as I wrote about at the time. “So there you have it,” I continued, “the Obama administration’s official strategy for conducting war with impunity wherever and whenever they want is to classify war as anything other than…war.” Drones are fuel for that sort of delusion, and they should be recognized by the American people as facilitating continued and expanded “war with impunity” from US leaders.

Cato’s Chris Preble writes:

Qaddafi’s death does not validate the original decision to launch military operations without authorization from Congress. The Libyan operation did not advance a vital national security interest, a point that former secretary of defense Robert Gates stressed at the time. Qaddafi could have been brought down by the Libyan people, but the Obama administration’s decision to overthrow him may now implicate the United States in the behavior of the post-Qaddafi regime. That is unfair to the American people, and to the Libyan people who can and must be held responsible for fashioning a new political order.

As we ponder the welcome news of Qaddafi’s capture, we should also recall the lessons from Iraq, and as they have played out in Libya. The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 did not signal the end of the Iraq war; likewise, the capture of Tripoli by anti-Qaddafi forces in August 2011 didn’t end the fighting there. I worry, too, that just as the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 didn’t end the Iraq War that pro-Qaddafi forces will continue to resist the new government there.

The news of his death is difficult to write about because it strikes me as not very important. I would only add to Preble’s comments by suggesting that the tacit understanding that the US decision to oust Gadhafi implicates the US in the reconstruction and governance of Libya was probably intended. The evidence suggesting Obama’s decision to intervene was a strategic decision based on a desired future role in the region abounds. Libya is an oil rich country in a strategically important region and having a dominating influence over the country, especially since it neighbors an Egypt in transition, is probably seen as a net positive by national security planners.

We should expect continued fighting and a profound struggle (to put it gently) for the NTC to actually secure power and operate a functioning government. But further down the line, if Libya at all goes the way Washington prefers, we should expect hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid going directly to the future “government” of Libya, a significant and constant flow of American-made weaponry as well, and a close relationship with US diplomats that is defined largely by being subservient to US interests (in return for the aforementioned booty).

Update: I should add that it is likely the forthcoming relationship between the US and Libya will be seen as unfavorable, to say the least, by Libyans and by the Arab world generally. Libya could very well come in to fill slot #3 – after Bahrain and Yemen – of countries which blatantly betray flowery US rhetoric about democracy and human rights in the region.

On an unrelated note, Gadhafi’s last words were reportedly “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Then…they shot him.

Latest Update: When WDAV insisted on keeping Lisa Simeone as a host of  “World of Opera,” NPR dropped “World of Opera” Friday from the list of shows it distributes nationally. WDAV says it will now distribute the show itself, and that Simeone isn’t going anywhere.

Update:The AP has confirmed that Lisa Simeone has indeed been fired from her hosting position for Soundprint. When reached by email earlier this morning, Simeone told Antiwar.com that she was headed into a conference call with NPR and affiliate station. More updates to follow

Update II : NPR is insisting today that although it has concerns with Simeone, and is in “conversations” with the affiliate that produces one of the shows she hosts — “World of Opera,” on WDAV — it did not pressure Soundprint to fire her yesterday, nor did it have any conversations with the Soundprint producers. NPR does say its  “ethics policy,” which was reportedly read to Simeone before she was fired from Soundprint, applies to all shows that NPR carries.

Update III: What “World of Opera” might sound like if Simeone isn’t fired.

Update IV : Simeone gets to keep the opera gig — for now!

The rightwing blogosphere, which in the face of the Occupy protests, has been feeling and acting more like a toddler who can’t get his way in the playground and has no idea of how to express it other than to run around crying, red-faced and hitting every moving thing with the sides of his balled-fists, has now gotten a woman fired from her job because she dared to get publicly involved with Occupy DC.

The Daily Caller, the brain child — emphasis on child — of Tucker Carlson, who has had the benefit of having an open point of view while pulling in big corporate salaries, like forever, who has never been in need of a handout or a free meal or a roof over his head, but likes to call Social Security and Medicare “welfare programs,” has been engaging in what amounts to pathetic undercover investigations  of Occupy DC since early October.

It’s latest is to decry that “National Public Radio host Lisa Simeone appears to be breaking the taxpayer-subsidized network’s ethics rules by acting as a spokeswoman for Occupy D.C. group ‘October 2011’ which is currently ‘occupying’ Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. and is rallying parallel and in concert with, with Occupy D.C. Simeone hosts NPR’s nationally syndicated ‘World of Opera‘ program and ‘SoundPrint,’ a program that airs on NPR’s WAMU affiliate at American University in Washington, D.C.”

Ooooh, call in the stasi. But wait, Simeone is a freelancer who isn’t even employed by NPR not to mention that  as host of an opera program is in no way involved in politics, news, current events or protests. Daily Caller may have forgotten to report that part, but once FOX News picked it up, NPR started getting Juan Williams flashbacks and supposedly pressured Simeone’s real employer to fire her. Just like that.

Note: Simeone has been working as an organizer with October 2011/Stop the Machine, which is a different organization that has been working parallel to, and at times in concert with, Occupy DC, and is also camping out at Freedom Plaza.

Here’s the hysterical email NPR sent out after Tucker and his bow-tied mob did their thing (hat tip to WarisaCrime.org):

From:NPR Communications
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 6:12 PM
Subject: From Dana Rehm: Communications Alert

To:       All Staff
Fr:        Dana Davis Rehm
Re:      Communications Alert

We recently learned of World of Opera host Lisa Simeone’s participation in an Occupy DC group. World of Opera is produced by WDAV, a music and arts station based in Davidson, North Carolina. The program is distributed by NPR. Lisa is not an employee of WDAV or NPR; she is a freelancer with the station.

We’re in conversations with WDAV about how they intend to handle this. We of course take this issue very seriously.

As a reminder, all public comment (including social media) on this matter is being managed by NPR Communications.

All media requests should be routed through NPR Communications at 202.513.2300 or mediarelations@npr.org. We will keep you updated as needed. Thanks.

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Michele Bachmann in last night’s presidential debate:

Cutting back on foreign aid is one thing. Being reimbursed by nations that we have liberated is another. We should look to Iraq and Libya to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations.

Bachmann isn’t the first to suggest that invading, destroying, and occupying a country for the benefit of defense corporations and Washington’s national security planners is grounds for reparations to be paid back to the United States government. I’ve written before about such idiotic proposals. This is such extreme ignorance it’s hard to stomach. Iraq is a country that was invaded in a war of aggression – without the justification of self-defense – and in which, by the most conservative estimates, well over 100,000 civilians were killed, horrifying war crimes were committed by US troops, and an economy was destroyed. The leader of the puppet government we’ve set up there, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has circumvented Parliament, consolidated illegitimate power in a long trend of quasi-dictatorial behavior, harshly cracked down on peaceful activism, harassed and even attacked journalists that were critical of his regime, and has been accused of torturing prisoners in secret Iraqi jails. In a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, US envoy Ryan Crocker noted in 2009 that Maliki’s turn towards more centralized rule is “in US interest.” To Bachmann and other vile dimwits, this is liberation.

That talk like this is even allowed in these debates without immediate and unalterable ostracism from politics or any position of any responsibility is indicative of how sickly the society is when it comes to American foreign policy.

She should be forced to directly ask these children and their families to pay up for all the hard work her and her henchman in the war party did to liberate them:

How long until impoverished Afghans have to hear about reparations for America’s benevolence?